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Title: The Catholic World, Vol. 22, October, 1875, to March, 1876 - A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science
Author: Various
Language: English
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
A
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
VOL. XXII.
OCTOBER, 1875, TO MARCH, 1876.
NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE,
9 Warren Street.
1876.
CONTENTS.
Allegri’s Miserere, 562.
Anglicans, Old Catholics, and the Conference at Bonn, 502.
Anti-Catholic Movements in the United States, 810.
Apostolic Mission to Chili, The, 548.
Are You My Wife? 13, 194, 309, 590, 735.
Basques, The, 646.
Birth-Place of S. Vincent de Paul, 64.
Castlehaven’s Memoirs, 78.
Chapter, A, in the Life of Pius IX., 548.
Charities of Rome, The, 266.
Christmas Vigil, A, 541.
Colporteurs of Bonn, The, 90.
Doctrinal Authority of the Syllabus, 31.
Duration, 111, 244.
Early Persecutions of the Christians, 104.
Eternal Years, The, 656, 841.
Finding a Lost Church, 282.
Freemasonry, 145.
Friends of Education, The, 758.
From Cairo to Jerusalem, 529.
Garcia Moreno, 691.
Gladstone Controversy, Sequel of the, 577, 721.
Grande Chartreuse, A Night at the, 712.
Historical Romance, A, 43, 162, 339, 614, 772.
Incident of the Reign of Terror, An, 260.
Indian Legend, 277.
Is She Catholic? 188.
King of Metals, The, 417.
Law of God, The, and the Regulations of Society, 223.
Lord Castlehaven’s Memoirs, 78.
Lost Church, Finding a, 282.
Louise Lateau before the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, 823.
Madame’s Experiment, 637.
Message, A, 445.
Midnight Mass in a Convent, 523.
Missions in Maine from 1613 to 1854, 666.
Mr. Gladstone and Maryland Toleration, 289.
Nellie’s Dream on Christmas Eve, 560.
New Hampshire, Village Life in, 358.
Night at the Grande Chartreuse, A, 712.
Palatine Prelates of Rome, 373.
Pious Pictures, 409.
Power, Action, and Movement, 379.
Precursor of Marco Polo, A. 210.
President’s Speech at Des Moines, The, 433.
President’s Message, The, 707.
Primitive Civilization, 626.
Progress _versus_ Grooves, 276.
Protestant Episcopal Church Congress, The, 473.
Prussia and the Church, 678, 787.
Queen Mary, 1.
Questions Concerning the Syllabus, 31.
Recollections of Wordsworth, 329.
Reign of Terror, An Incident of the, 260.
Revival in Frogtown, A, 699.
Rome, The Charities of, 266.
Rome, The Palatine Prelates of, 373.
S. Agnes’ Eve Story, A, 637.
St. Jean de Luz, 833.
Search for Old Lace in Venice, A, 852.
Sequel of the Gladstone Controversy, 577, 721.
Sir Thomas More, 43, 162, 339, 614, 772.
Songs of the People, 395.
Story of Evangeline in Prose, The, 604.
Story with Two Versions, A, 800.
Summary Considerations on Law, 223.
Traces of an Indian Legend, 277.
Tennyson’s Queen Mary, 1.
Village Life in New Hampshire, 358.
Vincent de Paul, S., Birth-Place of, 64.
William Tell and Altorf, 127.
Wordsworth, Recollections of, 329.
Year, The, of Our Lord 1875, 565.
Yule Raps, 484.
POETRY.
Adelaide Anne Procter, 89.
Æschylus, 209.
Christmas Chimes, 501.
Free Will, 559.
Not Yet, 394.
“O Valde Decora!” 12.
Paraphrase from the Greek, A, 222.
Patient Church, The, 613.
S. Philip’s Home, 139.
S. Louis’ Bell, 527.
Seven Fridays in Lent, The, 734.
Sine Labe Concepta, 357.
Song, 275.
Sonnets in Memory of the late Sir Aubrey de Vere, 444.
Stars, The, 126.
Suggested by a Cascade at Lake George, 771.
Summer Storms, 416.
Sweet Singer, A, 89.
To-day and Yesterday, 564.
Unremembered Mother, The, 110.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Acta et Decreta Concilii Vaticani, 718.
Alcott’s Eight Cousins, 431.
Allibert’s Life of S. Benedict, 575.
American State and American Statesmen, 719.
Allies’ Formation of Christendom, 858.
American Catholic Quarterly Review, The, 859.
Baunard’s Life of the Apostle S. John, 573.
Bégin’s Le Culte Catholique, 286.
Bégin’s The Bible and the Rule of Faith, 288.
Birlinger’s Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, 718.
Boudon’s Holy Ways of the Cross, 717.
Buckley’s Supposed Miracles, 856.
Calderon’s Groesste Dramen religiösen Inhalts, 718.
Clarke’s Mr. Gladstone and Maryland Toleration, 575.
Coleridge’s Public Life of Our Lord, 717.
Constable and Gillies, Personal Reminiscences of, 720.
Cudmore’s Civil Government of the States, etc., 429.
Correction, A, 860.
Dix’s The American State and American Statesmen, 719.
Earle’s Light leading unto Light, 143.
Eight Cousins, 431.
Evidences of Catholicity, 574.
Exposition of the Church, An, etc., 419.
Exposition of the Epistles of S. Paul, etc., 144.
First Annual Report of the Chaplain of the Albany Penitentiary, 144.
Flowers from the Garden of the Visitation, 287.
Formation of Christendom, The, 858.
Full Course of Instruction in Explanation of the Catechism, 432.
Garside’s The Sacrifice of the Eucharist, 718.
Historical Scenes from the Old Jesuit Missions, 575.
History of the Protestant Reformation, 574.
Holland’s Sevenoaks, 430.
Holy Ways of the Cross, etc., 717.
Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac, 430.
Indoors and Out; or, Views from the Chimney Corner, 720.
Jannet’s Les Etats-Unis Contemporains, etc., 716.
Kavanagh’s John Dorrien, 287.
Kip’s Historical Scenes, 575.
Knight and Raikes’ Personal Reminiscences, 288.
Lamb, Hazlitt, and Others, Personal Recollection of, 428.
Lehrbuch des Katholischen und Protestantischen Kirchenrechts, 718.
Lonormant’s Madame Récamier and her Friends, 431.
Life and Letters of Paul Seigneret, 576.
Life of S. Benedict, 575.
Life of the Apostle S. John, 573.
Light leading unto Light, 143.
Lynch’s (Bishop) Pastoral Letter, 576.
MacEvilly’s Exposition of S. Paul’s Epistles, etc., 144.
Manual of the Sisters of Charity, 432.
Manual of Catholic Indian Missionary Associations, 859.
Medulla Theologiæ Moralis, 574.
Miller’s Ship in the Desert, 573.
Miscellanea, 432.
Mr. Gladstone and Maryland Toleration, 575.
Moriarty’s Wayside Pencillings, 431.
Morris’ The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 141.
Noethen’s Report of the Albany Penitentiary, 144.
Noethen’s Thirteen Sermons, etc., 144.
Pastoral Letter of Bishop Lynch, 576.
Perry’s Full Course of Instruction, etc., 432.
Persecutions of Annam, The, 719.
Personal Reminiscences by Knight and Raikes, 288.
Personal Recollections of Lamb, Hazlitt, and Others, 428.
Personal Reminiscences by Constable and Gillies, 720.
Public Life of Our Lord, 717.
Rohling’s Medulla Theologiæ Moralis, 574.
Sacrifice of the Eucharist, etc., 718.
Sadlier’s Excelsior Geography, 430.
Sevenoaks, 430.
Ship in the Desert, The, 573.
Shortland’s The Persecutions of Annam, 719.
Spalding’s Miscellanea, 432.
Spalding’s Evidences of Catholicity, 574.
Spalding’s History of the Reformation, 574.
Story of S. Peter, 718.
Supposed Miracles, 856.
Thirteen Sermons preached in the Albany Penitentiary, 144.
Three Pearls, The, 573.
Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, The, 141.
Vering’s Lehrbuch des Katholischen und Protestantischen
Kirchenrechts, 718.
Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, 718.
Wayside Pencillings, etc., 431.
Young Catholic’s Illustrated Table Book, etc., 430.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXII., No. 127.--OCTOBER, 1875.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev. I. T.
HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
MR. TENNYSON’S QUEEN MARY.[1]
Mr. Tennyson has achieved a great reputation as a lyric poet. He urges
now a higher claim. In the sunset of a not inglorious life, when we
should have expected his lute to warble with waning melodies and less
impassioned strains, he lays it aside as too feeble for his maturer
inspirations, and, as though renewed with the fire of a second youth, he
draws to his bosom a nobler instrument, and awakes the echoes of sublimer
chords. He has grown weary of the lyric
“hœrentem multa cum laude coronam,”
and with some confidence claims the dramatic bays. Nay, he even invites a
comparison with Shakspere. True to the temper of the times, his prestige
follows him in so hazardous a competition, the accustomed wreaths are
showered upon him with unreflecting haste, and the facile representatives
of the most incapable of critics--public opinion--have already offered
him that homage as a dramatist which had already been too lavishly
offered to his idyllic muse.
It is an ungrateful task to go against the popular current, and it is
an ungracious one to object to crowns which the multitude have decreed.
But there is no help for it, unless we would stoop to that criticism of
prestige which is so characteristic of the age, and would follow in the
wake of the literary rabble, criticising the works by the author, instead
of the author by his works.
We may as well say, at once, that we have never felt it in our power
to acknowledge the poetical supremacy of the English poet-laureate.[2]
It has always appeared to us that there is, in his poetry, a lack of
inspiration. To borrow a too familiar but expressive metaphor, the coin
is highly burnished, glitters brightly, and has the current stamp, but
one misses the ring of the genuine metal. He sits patiently on the
tripod, dealing forth phrases as musical as Anacreon’s numbers, and
as polished as those of a Greek sophist, spiced with a refined humor,
which has a special charm of its own. But his soul does not kindle at
the sacred fire. We miss the divine frenzy. A passionateness of love
of the beautiful does not appear to be the quickening inspiration of
his creations. All alike show signs of extreme care and preparation. We
do not forget the counsel of Horace. But that only refers to a distant
revision of creations which an unchecked genius may have produced under
the divine influence. Whereas, Mr. Tennyson’s poetry bears evidence of
infinite toil in production. All his thoughts, ideas, and images, down to
words and phrases, are too evidently, instead of the happy inspirations
of genius, the labored workmanship of a polished, refined, and fastidious
mind. They something resemble the _tout ensemble_ of a _petit maître_
who has succeeded in conveying to his dress an appearance of such
consummate simplicity and unexceptionable taste that every one notices
the result of hours before the mirror. His diction is pure and polished,
his phrases simple and nervous, and the English language owes him much
for what he has done towards neutralizing the injury inflicted on it
by the gaudy phraseology of the “correct” poets, and the antithetical
sesquipedalianism of such prose writers as Johnson and Gibbon, and
for preserving it in its pure and nervous simplicity. But his soul is
dull to the poetic meanings of nature. His natural scenery is rather
descriptive than a creation, much as artists, of whom there are not a
few, who reproduce with consummate skill of imitation objects in detail,
and bestow infinite care upon color, shade, perspective, grouping, and
all the other technical details of a picture, whilst comparatively
indifferent to the subject, which ought to be the poetic meaning of
creations of genius. And what are they but only fruitful manifestations
of the love of the beautiful, and echoes of its creative word, not the
mere manipulations of an artificer? Mr. Tennyson’s descriptions of nature
owe their vividness to the brilliance of word-painting and a certain
refined delicacy of touch; sometimes, even, and indeed very often, to a
certain quaint humor which is inconsistent with the highest art--it is
not a passionate love which regards the object beloved from a ridiculous
point of view--as when he describes the willows living adown the banks of
a streamlet as “shock-headed pollards _poussetting_ down the stream.”
The sensations provoked by his poetry resemble those of one who has
sauntered through a museum of precious stones of rare workmanship and
purest water. Our æsthetic taste has been pleased by the glitter and the
color and the brilliance, but our mind and heart have not been deeply
moved. His poems are ablaze with detached thoughts of lofty meaning,
and of a multitude of others whose meaning is not obvious, all alike
expressed in vivid imagery, in the purest phraseology, and in rare melody
of rhythm. But they are confused and cabalistic. He seems to be always
laboring to be incomprehensible. He calls it “the riddling of the bards.”
And he succeeds. The problem of the Sphinx, the emblematic warning sent
by the Scythians to their Persian invader, the mute counsel sent by the
Samian to the Corinthian tyrant, a Delphic oracle, all were clear and
easy by comparison with Mr. Tennyson’s lyrics, alike in detached passages
and in entire poems. None of woman born can fathom the meaning of the
_Idylls of the King_.
This defect alone is fatal to poetry. So keenly did Spenser feel it that
although the meaning of his allegory, _The Faerie Queene_, is obvious
enough to any ordinary intelligence, he is careful to explain it in full
in a letter dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh.
Mr. Tennyson, on the contrary, involves himself in the thickest mystery
he can contrive, and expects his worshippers to take it for inspiration.
Take the following, for example, from “The Coming of Arthur”:
“Rain, rain, and sun, a rainbow in the sky!
A young man will be wiser by-and-by,
An old man’s wit may wander e’er he die.
“Rain, rain, and sun, a rainbow on the lea!
And truth is this to me, and that to thee
And truth, or clothed or naked, let it be.
“Rain, sun, and rain! and the free blossom blows,
Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who knows?
From the great deep to the great deep he goes.”
These are, no doubt, “riddling triplets,” as he himself calls them. The
riddling of Shakspere’s fools, even the wanderings from the night of
distraught Ophelia’s brain, are light itself by the side of them. We may
well echo his invocation of “Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who
knows?” Whatever inspiration may be evident here, it is not that of the
beautiful. And yet even this has snatches of meaning which many passages
we might adduce have not; as the following, from “Gareth and Lynette”:
“Know ye not, then, the riddling of the bards?
Confusion, and illusion, and relation.
Elusion, and occasion, and evasion?”
It is almost a pity that the bard did not complete his “riddling” while
he was about it. Another couplet:
Diffusion, and ablution, and abrasion.
Ablution, expectation, botheration,
would have rendered still more impenetrable the bardic mystery.
There is no resemblance in this studied concealment of meaning, if
meaning there be, to that
“Sacred madness of the bards
When God makes music through them,”
of which he sings. It is more like the melodious confusion of the Æolian
harp. Even if the poet have a definite meaning in his own mind, if he
so express it that I cannot even guess it, to me it is nonsense; and
nonsense, however melodious, although it may enchant my sense, cannot
move my heart. Here and there, however, our poet sings snatches of real
poetry, as Sir Bedivere’s answer to his king in “The Coming of Arthur”:
“I heard the water lapping on the craig
And the long ripple washing in the reeds.”
Upon the whole, Mr. Tennyson excels in a certain underlying vein of
exquisitely refined humor. And when his subject admits of it, he is
unrivalled. His is the poetry of humor. We would name as examples “The
Northern Farmer” and the satirical poem, “Locksley Hall,” perhaps the
most vigorous of all his productions; and, of his longer poems, _The
Princess_. It is for this reason we think he is more likely to excel, as
a dramatist, in comedy than in tragedy.
If our readers would estimate the full force of our remarks, we would
invite them to read the works of any of the principal of our earlier
lyrical poets, as, for example, Collins. We name him because he too
excels in that melody of versification for which Mr. Tennyson is so
distinguished. At times, as in his “Sonnet on Evening,” he surpasses the
Laureate in that respect, although for sustained and unfailing rhythmical
melody the latter bears away the palm from him, and perhaps from every
other rival. But in profound sympathy with nature, in the fidelity of his
creations, in the echoes of the beautiful which he provokes within the
soul of the reader, the Poet-Laureate must yield to the Demy of Magdalen.
Like Shakspere, he peopled inanimate nature with a fairy world, and
amongst elves and genii and other dainty spirits he abandoned himself to
that power of impersonation which is almost an attribute of a true poet.
Our space does not admit of illustrative quotations, but we would refer
the reader inclined to institute the comparison suggested to the elegy
over Fidele, in the play of _Cymbeline_, and to his _Eclogues_.
Mr. Tennyson’s poetry has beauties of its own peculiar kind of so
remarkable and striking a description that we might have hesitated to
take any exceptions whatsoever to his poetical genius. But his new poem,
his first effort in dramatic poetry, seems to us to set all doubt at
rest. It convinces us that, for whatever reasons, of the highest flights
of poetic inspiration Mr. Tennyson is incapable. We are convinced that he
lacks that which constitutes a great poet. However beautiful his poetry,
we feel that it wants something which, however keenly we may be sensible
of it, it is not easy either to analyze or explain.
For what is the inspiration of poetry but the echoes of the beautiful
within the soul of man? The universe of things is the visible word
of God. It is his essential beauty projected by an energy of creative
love--the quickening spirit opening his wings over chaos--into an
objective existence, on which its generator looked with complacency
as “very good,” and which he generated in order that his creature,
whom he had made in his own image, might, with himself, rejoice in
its contemplation. He did not, at first, endow him with the power of
beholding himself “face to face,” but only his reflex. We have the right
to believe that, whilst in union with his Maker, he read at a glance the
meaning of the word, he felt instantaneously the beauty of the image. His
nature, into which no discord had as yet been introduced, uncondemned
to the judgment of painful toil, did not acquire charity and knowledge
by long and laborious processes, disciplinary and ratiocinative, but by
intuition. Incapable as yet of the Beatific Vision, he comprehended the
whole of the divine beauty as revealed in creation, and the comprehension
itself was a transport of love. He saw, and knew, and loved, and the
three were one simultaneous energy of the sonship of his nature. But, as
now, “the greatest of these was charity.” It was the result and sum and
end of the sight and knowledge. It was the feeling they inevitably and
unremittingly occasioned. To speak as we can only speak in our actual
condition, it was as those thuds of loving admiration with which our
hearts throb when we look upon some surpassing embodiment of innocent
and modest female loveliness. When the mind, jealous of pre-eminence,
led captive, so to speak, the heart in revolt against the revealed law,
the human being was no longer in union with himself, a war of impulses
and of energies was set up within him, the image of God was defaced, his
perception of created beauty became more and more obscure as he went
further away from his original abode of innocence, until, finally, it was
all but lost. The emotion, if we may describe it as such, which it was of
its nature to suggest, could not perish, for it is imperishable. But it
had lost its true object, and surveyed knowledge in a form more or less
degraded.
Now out of this very faint and rapid sketch of a psychological theory
which would require a volume for its development, we hope to be able to
convey some idea, however vague, of the nature of the poetic spirit.
It is certain that the remains of the divine image have not since been
alike and equal in all the individuals of the race. It may be asserted,
on the contrary, that there are no two human microcosms in which the
elements of the confusion introduced into them by the original infidelity
exist in the same proportion. Those in whom the intelligence is the
quickest to see, and the mind, heart, and soul to love in unison, the
image of divine beauty revealed in creation--those, that is, in whom the
divine image remains the most pronouncedly--are the truest poets.
When this echo of the soul to the beautiful does not go beyond the
physical creation, the inspirations of love express themselves in lyric
or idyllic poetry. The poet imitates the divine Creator in reproducing,
even creating, images of his lower creation so faithful and suggestive
that they who look upon them experience similar sensations and emotions
to those provoked within them by the divine creation itself, nay, not
unseldom, even profounder ones. He reveals the beautiful in similar
images to those in which The Beautiful revealed himself to his creature;
he is thus himself a ποιητὴς, or creator, and his work is a ποίησις, or
creation. When his forms derive their inspiration only from the inferior
creation, they are exclusively some form of idyls or lyrics. But when,
soaring above the grosser medium of the merely material universe, and
poising himself on wings tremulous with reverent joy at the confines
of the invisible, his soul echoes the music of the beautiful issuing
from that invisible creation; and that imitative energy which is of its
essence, inspired by these reawakening inspirations, calls into being
psychical individualities with their precise bodily expression and
proper destinies--that is to say, with all the causes and results, ebb
and flow, action and reaction, in human affairs, of every volition and
energy, he reproduces the highest energy of the divine creative power, he
evokes into sensible existence whole multitudes of fresh creatures made
in the image of God, and, what is even yet more sublime, he evokes into
equally sensible being the particular providence which overrules each
and all--the one difference between the two creations being that one is
original, the other imitative; one imaginary--that is, _merely_ sensible;
the other, not only sensible, but _real_ also, and _essential_. Yet are
the accidents of the former produced occasionally with such extraordinary
fidelity that they have sometimes, as in the creations of Shakspere, for
example, the same effect upon those who become acquainted with them as if
they were in truth the latter.
Who that has ever studied the creations of that immortal dramatist has
not them all, from high to low, treasured within his inner being as
vividly as any other of his absent acquaintances, whom he has met in
society, to whom he has been formally introduced, with whom he has eaten,
drank, laughed, wept, walked, and conversed? Has not that remarkable
genius transgressed even the imitative faculty--imitative, that is,
of all the original creative energy that is known--produced original
creations, and peopled the preter- rather than supernatural with beings
which have no known existence, but whom nevertheless he surrounds with a
distinct verisimilitude which ensures them easy admission into our minds
and hearts, which presents them to our senses as concrete beings with as
much positiveness, and even as clearly defined individuality, as if they
were solid creatures of flesh and bone, and which makes us feel that if
such beings did really exist, they would be none other than precisely
those he has represented?
Of such sort, we take it, is the highest, or dramatic, poetry. And of
it there is a manifest deficiency in this work, which its author terms,
indeed, a drama, but which is in fact a tragedy.
Mr. Tennyson has not enough of the divine afflatus to write tragedy. If
he has not sufficient love of the beautiful in inanimate nature for his
soul to echo to it, and his heart to throb with the sense of it, with
the rapidity of an intuition, so as to make unattainable to him the
highest excellence in lyric poetry, how much more out of his reach must
be a first rank in the tragic drama; where, if anywhere, an intuition of
the beautiful amounting to an inspiration is demanded in that supreme
creation of God which, as the consummation of his “work” and word, he has
embodied in his own substance! In that profound and intuitive perception
of the workings of man’s inner being, of the passions, emotions,
feelings, appetites, their action and reaction, ebb and flow; of the
struggle of the two natures, its infinite variety and play of life, under
all conceivable conditions and vicissitudes, with much more than can be
detailed here included in these, Mr. Tennyson is strikingly deficient.
In the tragedies of Shakspere, as in all his dramas, the distinct
personality of every one of the characters, high and low, is impressed
upon us with vivid distinctness. But the principal personages in the
tragedies dilate before us in heroic proportions as the portentous
struggle progresses. Whether it be King Lear, or King John, or King
Richard, or Othello, or Lady Macbeth, or Lady Constance, or the widowed
Princess of Wales, or Ophelia, or whoever else, we look on with bated
breath, as did the spectators of the boat-race with which Æneas
celebrated the suicide of his regal paramour, and we come away at its
close a prey to the storm of emotions which the magic art of the island
sorcerer has conjured up within us.
But the drama, or tragedy, as we prefer to call it, we read with but
languid interest. The psychical struggle is neither very obvious nor very
critical, there is no very striking revelation of the sublime beauty or
tragic overthrow of human nature, and although the canvas is crowded
with figures, not one of them impresses any very distinct image of his
or her individuality on our mind and heart. Instead of, as Shakspere’s
creations, retaining every one of them as a distinct and intimate
acquaintance, whom we may summon into our company at will, we rise from
the perusal of _Queen Mary_ without having received any very definite
impression of any, even the principal, personages, and we forget all
about them almost as soon as we have read the play.
This vital defect in a drama the author has rendered doubly fatal through
his having carried his imitation of Shakspere to the extent of adopting
his simplicity of plot. Shakspere could afford to do this. The inspired
verisimilitude of the struggle of the two natures in every one of his
human creations, the profoundness of his development of the innermost
working of the human microcosm, often by a few master-touches, surround
every one of his _dramatis personæ_ with all the rapt suspense and
sustained interest of a plot. Every one of his characters is, as it were,
a plot in itself. But it is quite certain that Mr. Tennyson--and it is no
depreciation of him--has not this power. He has, therefore, every right
to call to his aid the interest of an elaborate plot, which itself would
also, we think, cause him to develop more vividly his characters. It is
in this the late Lord Lytton, whose poetical pretensions are very much
below Mr. Tennyson’s, achieved whatever success he had as a dramatist.
Mr. Tennyson has not to depend on this solely, as was very nearly the
case with Lord Lytton, but it would contribute very much to a higher
success. The great dramatist he is unwise enough so avowedly to imitate
peoples the simplest plot with a whole world of stirring destinies. He
moves his quickening wand, and lo! as by the master-will of a creator,
appear a Hamlet or a Malvolio, a Lady Macbeth or a Goneril or Miranda,
an Ariel or a Caliban, contribute their precise share to the history,
which would not have been complete without them, and then disappear from
the scene, but never from our memory. A magic word or two has smitten
them into _it_, and they live for aye in our mind and heart. His heroes
and his heroines he clothes with such a majesty of poetry that we watch
anxiously with bated breath their every gesture, word, or look; we
cannot bear their absence, until, entranced into their destiny, and half
unconscious, we watch them disappear in the catastrophe, our ears are
blank, all voices mute, the brilliant theatre is the chamber of death,
and they who, to us, were but now living flesh and blood, in whose
destinies our innermost soul was rapt, have passed away, amidst a tempest
of emotions, and are no more.
But Thucydides’ _History of the Peloponnesian War_, either of the
two great classic epics, or any striking historic passage in even so
ungraphic a writer as Lingard, is more dramatic than this drama. The
feeble plot gives birth to feebler impersonations. They come and go
without making any deep impression upon us, or seizing our attention by
any striking originality. Their features are indistinct, their actions
insignificant. They are bloodless and colorless. They are ghosts, things
of air, whom a feeble incantation has summoned from their slumber, who
mutter a few laborious Spartanisms in a renewed life in which they
seem to have no concern, and vanish without provoking a regret, nor
even an emotion. We observe in them such an absence of verisimilitude,
so marked a want of truth to nature, as very much to weaken, when it
does not entirely destroy, the dramatic illusion. Nowhere is this more
observable than where he intends most manifestly a rivalry of Shakspere.
Shakspere not unseldom introduces the multitude into his poetic history.
But when he does so, it seizes our interest as forcibly as his more
important personages. With a few rapid touches he dashes in a few typical
individuals, who reveal to us vividly what the whole kind of thing is
of which they are prominent units. They are the mob of the very time
and place to which they belong. Whether at Rome in the time of Julius
Cæsar, or at Mantua or Verona in the Middle Ages, or in England during
the time of the Tudors, we feel that they act and speak just as then
and there they might have said and done. Every one, too, has his or
her distinct individuality. And such a verisimilitude have they that
even an occasional anachronism, such as, in _Troilus and Cressida_,
making a Trojan servant talk of _being in the state of grace_, does not
dispel the charm. But Mr. Tennyson’s mob-types have no more striking
features to seize our interest than his more exalted creations, whilst
his anachronisms are of a kind which send all verisimilitude to the
winds. Joan and Tib, and the four or five citizens, have nothing in them
for which they should be singled out of the very ordinary condition of
life to which they belong. And we are tempted to sneer when we hear an
Elizabethan mob talking like Hampshire or Yorkshire peasants of the
present day.
For all that, Mr. Tennyson’s cockneys and rustics are not his most
ineffective portraiture. We experience a slight sensation of their
having been lugged in, perhaps because of the inevitable comparison with
Shakspere they provoke, and we feel them to be too modern; but the poet’s
sense of humor here serves him in good stead, and although, in this
respect, immeasurably below Shakspere, he gives a kind of raciness to his
plebeians which saves them from being an absolute failure.
It is, however, in the principal personages of the drama that we most
miss the Promethean fire, and pre-eminently in the hero, if Cranmer is
intended for such a dignity, and the heroine. Amongst these, the most
lifelike are Courtenay and Sir Thomas Wyatt; because, in their creation,
the peculiar vein of quaint irony and exceedingly refined humor, which is
Mr. Tennyson’s most eminent distinction, comes to his aid. For the rest,
up to the heroine herself and the canting and recanting Cranmer, they are
colorless and bloodless. We scarcely know one from the other. And we do
not care to. Noailles and Renard are but poor specimens of diplomatists.
Their sovereigns, were the time the present, might pick up a dozen such
any day in Wall Street. If the poet could embody no greater conception
of two such men as Bonner and Gardiner than a couple of vulgar,
self-seeking, blood-thirsty knaves, he should have dispensed altogether
with their presence. He should have given to them some elevation,
whatever history may say about it. A drama is a poem, not a history; and
the poet may take the names of historic personages and, within certain
limits, fit to them creations of his own. In Cardinal Pole he had an
opportunity for a noble ideal. But all we have is an amiable dummy, an
old gentleman, as ordinary and ineffective as the rest.
Facts have been so distorted by the influence which for so long had sole
possession of literature, that there is plenty of room for taking great
liberties with history. Mr. Tennyson has slightly availed himself of
this, but in the wrong direction. Shakspere himself could not have made
a saint of Cranmer. For poetry, there was nothing for it but to make him
a more splendid sinner. To retain all his littlenesses and to array them
in seductive virtues, is to present us with some such figure as the dusky
chieftains decked in gaudy tinsel that solicit our admiration in front of
the tobacconists’ shops. To attempt to give heroic proportions to a man
whose profession of faith followed subserviently his self-interest until
no hope remained, and then place in the hands of the burning criminal
the palm of martyrdom, is to invite the love within us of the beautiful
and the true to echo to a psychical impossibility, and that without an
element of greatness.
Yet had the front figure of the history been a noble conception grandly
executed all this might have been condoned. One might well have looked
at them as a few rough accessories to heighten by their contrast the
beauty of the central form. There was place for a splendid creation. No
more favorable material for a tragic heroine exists than Mary Tudor--with
the single exception of that other Mary who fell beneath the Puritans
like a lily before the scythe of the destroyer. Around her history and
person circle all the elements of the tenderest pathos, which is of the
very essence of tragedy. That Shakspere did not use them is a proof
he thought so. For “the fair vestal throned in the west” would have
resented such a creation as his quickening genius would have called
to life. A queen of noble nature gradually swept away by a resistless
current of untoward circumstances, is a history capable of the sublimity
of a Greek catastrophe, with the added pathos of Christian suffering.
But who have we here? A silly woman, devoutly pious, and endowed with
a conspicuous share of the family courage. But she is so weak that
her piety has the appearance of superstition, and her fits of courage
lose their royalty and fail to rescue her from contempt. Unattractive
in person, she falls desperately in love with a man much younger than
herself, and her woman’s love, ordinarily so quick to detect coldness in
a lover, is blind to the grossest neglect; and yet not so blind but that
a few words scrawled on a rag of paper, dropped in her way, could open
her eyes on the spot. The tenderness of her love and the importunity of
cruel-minded men, transform her almost suddenly from a gentle-natured
woman to an unrelenting human tigress. And she, who would not allow the
law to take its course on her most dangerous enemies, can exclaim of her
sister Elizabeth,
“To the Tower with _her_!
My foes are at my feet, and I am queen.”
Afterwards of Guilford Dudley, the Duke of Suffolk, and Lady Jane Grey--
“They shall die.”
And again of her sister--
“She shall die.
My foes are at my feet, and Philip king.”
This is not the grandness of crime, as in Richard III., or even in Lady
Macbeth. It is the petty despotism of a weak and silly woman. There is
no greatness of any kind about it. It is the mere triumphant chuckle
of an amorous queen, wooing a more than indifferent husband. It is
little--little enough for a comedy. There is something approaching the
tragic in the desolation of her last moments. Calais is lost, her husband
hates her, her people hate her. But the poet has already robbed her of
the dignity of her position. She has forfeited our esteem. We experience
an ordinary sympathy with her. But her fate is only what was to be
expected. And the highest pathos is out of the question. When, following
the example of her injured mother in the play of _Henry VIII._, she
betakes herself to lute and song, the author insists on a comparison with
Shakspere, and beside the full notes of the Bard of Avon the petty treble
of the Laureate pipe shrinks to mediocrity.
But the most unpardonable of Mr. Tennyson’s imitations of Shakspere are
those in which he rings the changes on the celebrated passage about “no
Italian priest shall tithe nor toll in our dominions,” which inevitably
provokes the applause of those amongst a theatrical audience who do not
know what it means--unpardonable, because it makes even Shakspere himself
as ridiculous as a poor travesty cannot fail to do. He was content with
one such passage throughout his many plays. If Terence had filtered
the noble sentiment of his celebrated passage, “Ego homo sum, et nihil
humanum a me alienum,” through a variety of forms, it would have excited
the laughter instead of the plaudits of the Roman “gods.” But the author
of _Queen Mary_ is not afraid to pose _his_ sentiment, itself borrowed
in no less than three different attitudes in one play; committing the
additional absurdity of thrusting it, like a quid of tobacco, into the
cheek of two different personages. Gardiner uses it twice, Elizabeth once:
“Yet I know well [says the former]
Your people …
Will brook nor Pope nor Spaniard here to play
The tyrant, or in commonwealth or church”;
and again, with questionable taste:
“And see you, we shall have to _dodge_ again,
And let the Pope trample our rights, and plunge
His _foreign fist_ into our island church,
To plump the leaner pouch of Italy”;
whilst Elizabeth is made to vulgarize it beyond hope of redemption into a
mere petty ebullition of splenetic womanly vanity:
“Then, Queen indeed! No foreign prince or priest
Should fill my throne, myself upon the steps.”
It must be owned, indeed, that this play lacks the highest poetry in
its expression as much as in its conception. We occasionally come
across passages of vivid and vigorous limning, as Count Feria’s reply
to Elizabeth towards the end of the play, and Howard’s description to
the Lord Mayor of the state of mind of the citizens. But even the force
of this latter passage is not dramatic. There is none of the rush and
movement of an excited populace. There are a few striking groups. But
they are inactive. Theirs is a kind of dead life, if we may be pardoned
such an expression. Rather, they are mere _tableaux vivants_. They
inspire us with no fear for Mary’s throne. More near to dramatic power
and beauty is Elizabeth’s soliloquy at Woodstock, suddenly lowered in the
midst of its poetry, even to nursery familiarity, by the introduction of
such a phrase as “catch me who can.”
But for one single effort of the highest poetic flight we look in vain.
Even the few snatches of his lyre which he introduces fail to woo us.
They are not natural. If they are poetry, it is poetry in a court-dress.
It is rich with brocade, and the jewels glitter bravely; it treads
delicately, but its movements are artificial and constrained. Compare,
for example, the song of the Woodstock milkmaid, wherein labor is visible
in every line, with those gushes of nature with which the poet’s soul
would seem to be bubbling over the brim of the visible in the various
lyrical snatches of Ariel or with the song of Spring at the end of
_Love’s Labor Lost_.
But what has more surprised us than the lack of the poetic inspiration in
this drama is the occasional want of correct taste in a writer of such
exceeding polish as Mr. Tennyson. Such a speech as
“And God hath blest or cursed me with a nose--
Your boots are from the horses,”
should not have been put in the mouth of a lady, still less a lady of the
rank of Elizabeth, and that the less when she appeals to our sympathies
from a kind of honorable imprisonment.
Lady Magdalen Dacres may have beat King Philip with a staff for insulting
her, and have remained a lady, but we do not want to be told, in the
midst of dramatic pathos,
“But by God’s providence a good stout staff
Lay near me; and you know me strong of arm;
I do believe I lamed his Majesty’s.”
Is our poet, again, so barren of invention that he could find no other
way of portraying Philip’s indifference to his Queen than the following:
“By S. James, I do protest,
Upon the faith and honor of a Spaniard,
I am vastly grieved to leave your Majesty.
Simon, is supper ready?”
“RENARD--Ay, my liege,
I saw the covers laying.”
“PHILIP--Let’s have it.”
Whatever may be the character he may have wished to depict in Philip, we
expect a Spanish king to be a gentleman. And such an ending of a scene
susceptible of the tenderest pathos, where the heroine and another of the
principal personages of the drama are in presence, argues a wonderful
dulness of perception of the beautiful.
Worse than all, however, is his treatment of Cardinal Pole.
Shakspere puts a few words of Latin into the mouth of Cardinal Wolsey
in a scene in _Henry VIII._, in which he and Cardinal Campeggio are
endeavoring to bend the queen to the king’s will. But it is a wonderful
touch of nature. It is one of those profound intuitions for which the
great dramatist is so distinguished. So seemingly simple an incident
reveals, at a touch, as it were, the preoccupation of Wolsey’s mind, and
the hollowness at once and difficulty of the duty he had suffered to
be imposed upon him. They had paid her ostensibly a private visit, as
friends. But Wolsey, oppressed with the difficulty of his undertaking,
and meditating how he should set about it, forgets himself, the old habit
crops up, and he begins as if he were beginning a formal ecclesiastical
document:
“Tanta est erga te mentis integritas, regina serenissima.”
It is a slip. The queen stops him. He recollects himself, and we hear no
more Latin.
But in this drama the poet literally makes a cardinal, and such a
cardinal as Pole, address Queen Mary with the angelic salutation to the
Blessed Virgin, and in Latin:
“Ave Maria, gratia plena, benedicta tu in mulieribus!”
Upon the whole, the defects of this drama are so many and so serious, so
radical and fundamental, that no competent criticism can pronounce it
other than a failure; and a failure more complete than would have been
thought possible to a poet of so great a reputation as Mr. Tennyson.[3]
“O VALDE DECORA!”
Could I but see thee, dear my love!
That face--but once! Not dazzling bright--
Not as the blest above
Behold it in God’s light--
But as it look’d at La Salette;
Or when, in Pyrenean wild,
It beam’d on Bernadette,
The favor’d peasant child.
Once seen--a moment--it would blind
These eyes to beauty less than thine:
And where could poet find
Such theme for song as mine?
But if I ask what may not be,
So spell me with thy pictur’d face
That haunting looks from thee
May hold me like a grace.
ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,”
ETC.
CHAPTER IX.
And now a new life began for Franceline.
“You must fly from idleness as from sin,” Father Henwick said; “you must
never let a regret settle on your mind for an instant. It will often be
hard work to resist them; but we are here to fight. You must shut the
door in the face of idle thoughts by activity and usefulness. I will
help you in this. You must set to work amongst the poor; not so as to
fatigue yourself, or interfere with your duties and occupations at home,
but enough to keep you busy and interested. At first it will be irksome
enough, I dare say; but never mind that. By and by the effort will bring
its own reward, and be a pleasure as well as a duty.”
He sat down and wrote out a time-table for her which filled up every hour
of the day, and left not one moment for brooding. There were visits to
the cottages and a class for children in the morning; the afternoon hours
were to be devoted to helping her father, writing and copying for him,
sometimes copying MSS. for Father Henwick, with no other purpose than to
keep her mind and her fingers occupied.
But when the excitement caused by this change in her daily routine
subsided, something of the first heart-sinking returned. Do what she
would, thought would not be dumb. The external activity could not
silence the busy tongues of her brain or deafen her to their ceaseless
whisperings. It was weary work staggering on under her load, while memory
tugged at her heart-strings and dragged its longings the other way. It
was hard not to yield to the temptation now and then of sitting down by
the wayside to rest and look back towards the Egypt that was for ever
out of sight. But Franceline very seldom yielded to the treacherous
allurement. When she caught herself lapsing into dreams, she would rise
up with a resolute effort, and shake off the torpor, and set to work at
something. When the torpor changed to a sting of anguish, she would steep
her soul in prayer--that unfailing opiate of the suffering spirit, its
chloroform in pain.
One day, about three weeks after Father Henwick’s return, she was coming
home through the wood after her morning’s round amongst the cottages.
She was very tired in mind and body. It was dull work dinning the
multiplication-table into Bessy Bing’s thick skull, and teaching her
unnimble fingers to turn the heel of a stocking; to listen to the widow’s
endless lamentations over “the dear departed” and the good old times when
they killed a pig every year, and always had a bit of bacon on the rack.
Franceline came to the old spot where she used to sit and listen to the
concert of the grove. The songsters were nearly all silent now, for the
green was turning gold; but the felled tree was lying in the same place,
and tempted her to rest a moment and watch the sun shooting his golden
shafts through the wilderness of stems all round. Another moment, and she
was in dreamland; but the spell had scarcely fallen on her when it was
broken by the sound of footfalls crushing the yellow leaves that made
a carpet on every path. She started to her feet, and walked on. A few
steps brought her face to face with Father Henwick. He greeted her with a
joyous exclamation.
“Here comes my little missionary! What has she been doing to-day?”
“She has achieved a great conquest; she has arrived at making Bessy Bing
apprehend the problem that seven times nine and nine times seven produce
one and the same total,” replied Franceline with mock gravity.
Father Henwick laughed; but the tired expression of her face did not
escape him.
“I am afraid you will be growing too conceited if this sort of thing goes
on,” he said. “But you must not overdo it, my dear child; it won’t do to
wear yourself out in gaining arithmetical triumphs.”
“Better wear out than rust out.” And Franceline shrugged her shoulders;
she had learned the expressive French trick from her father.
The priest bent his clear eyes on her for a second without speaking. She
read, disappointment, and perhaps mild reproach, in them.
“I am sorry I said that, father; I did not mean to complain.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“Because it was cowardly and ungrateful.”
“To whom?”
“To you, who are so kind and so patient with me!”
“And who bids me be kind? Who teaches me to be patient with you?--poor
little bruised lamb!”
“I know it, father; I feel it in the bottom of my heart; but one can’t
always be remembering.” There was the slightest touch of impatience in
her tone.
“How if God were some day to grow tired of remembering us, and bearing
with us, and forgiving us?”
“I know. But I am not rebelling; only sickening and suffering. You
have told me there was no sin in that?” The words came tremulous, as
if through rising tears; but Franceline raised her head with a defiant
movement, and forced the briny drops down. “I cannot help it!” she
continued impetuously; “I have tried my best, and I cannot help it!”
Father Henwick heaved an almost inaudible sigh before he said: “What
cannot you help, Franceline? Suffering?”
“No! I don’t care about that! Remembering I cannot forget.”
“My poor child! would to God I could help you! I would suffer willingly
in your place!” The words came like a gush from his inmost heart. They
broke down the sufferer’s proud resistance and let the tears have vent.
He turned to walk back with her. For some time neither spoke; only the
soft sobs that came unchecked from Franceline broke the temple-like
stillness of the wood. Suddenly she cried out in a tone of passionate
desperation: “O father! it is dreadful. It will kill me if it lasts
much longer! The humiliation is more than I can bear! To feel that I am
harboring a feeling that my whole soul rebels against, that is revolting
in the eyes of God and of my conscience! And I cannot master it!”
“You will never master it by pride, Franceline; that very pride is your
greatest hindrance in setting your heart free. Try and think more of God
and less of yourself. There is no sin, as you say, in the suffering, any
more than, if you strayed to the edge of a precipice in the dark, and
fell over and were killed, you would be guilty of suicide. The sinfulness
now is in your rebellion against the suffering simply because it wounds
your pride.”
“It is not all pride, father,” she said meekly. Presently she turned and
looked up at him through wet lashes. “Father, I must tell you something,”
she said, speaking with a sort of timidity that was unusual with her
towards him--“a thought that came to me this morning that never came to
me before.…”
“What was it?”
“If his wife should die … he would be free?”
A dark shadow fell now on Father Henwick’s large, smooth brow. Franceline
read his answer in the frown and the averted gaze; but he spoke soon,
though he did not look at her.
“That was a sinful thought! You should have cast it behind you with
contempt. Has it come to that with you, that you could look forward to
the death of any one as a thing to be longed for?”
“I did not long for it. The thought came to me.”
“You should have hunted it out of your mind like an evil spirit, as it
was. You must never let it near you again. _He_ should be to you as if
he were already dead. Whether his wife dies or not should not, and does
not, concern you. Besides, how do you know whether she is not as young as
yourself, and stronger? My child, such a thought as that would lead you
to the brink of an abyss, if you listened to it.”
“I never will again, father,” she answered promptly. “I hardly know now
whether I listened to it or not; only I could not help telling you.”
“You were right to tell me; and now banish it, and never let it approach
you again.”
After a pause he resumed:
“You are sure that silence is best with M. de la Bourbonais?”
“Oh! yes. How can you ask me, father?” And Franceline looked up in
surprise.
“Yet it cannot remain a secret from him for ever; he is almost certain to
hear of it sooner or later, and it might save him a severe shock if he
heard it from you. It would set his mind at rest about you?”
“It is quite at rest at present on that score. He has no idea that the
discovery would be likely to affect me.”
“You are better able to judge of that, of course, than I am. But it
grieves me to see you have a secret from your father; I wish it could be
avoided.”
“But it cannot; indeed it cannot!” she repeated emphatically. “You may
trust me to speak, if I thought it could be done without injury to both
of us. It is much better to wait; perhaps by the time it comes to his
ears I may be able to hear him speak of it without betraying myself and
paining him.”
Father Henwick acquiesced, but reluctantly. He hoped she was right in
supposing M. de la Bourbonais quite blind to what had been so palpable
to a casual observer. But, making even the fullest allowance for the
absent-minded habits of the studious man, this seemed scarcely probable.
Franceline had affirmed it herself more confidently, perhaps, than
was warranted. She had, however, succeeded in lulling her father into
forgetfulness of his former conjectures and impressions; she was
certain of this. It had been done at a terrible price of endurance and
self-control; but she had succeeded, and it would be doubly cruel now to
revive his suspicions and let him know the truth.
“I will trust you,” said Father Henwick; “it is indeed a mercy that he is
not called upon to bear such a trial while he is yet so unprepared.”
There was an earnestness about him as he said this that would have caused
Franceline a deeper emotion than curiosity if her mind were not fixed
wide of the mark. She replied after a moment’s reflection: “If anything
should occur to make it necessary to tell him, will you break it to him,
father?”
“I will,” said the priest simply.
Franceline had not the least fear of Father Henwick. The severity of his
passionless brow did not frighten her; it never checked the outflow of
the thoughts and emotions that came surging up from her own perturbed
heart. He seemed too far removed from strife himself to be affected by
it, except as a pitying angel might, looking down from his calm heaven
on poor mortals struggling and striving in the smoke and din of their
earthly battle-field.
“Father,” said Franceline suddenly, “I wish I cared more for the poor!
I wish I could love them and pity them as you do; but I don’t. I’m so
shy of going amongst them. I’m sure I don’t do them any good, and they
don’t do me any good, they’re so prosy and egotistical--most of them, at
least.”
He turned an amused, indulgent smile on her.
“There was a time when I thought so too; but persevere, and the love
will come after a little while. All that is worth having is bought with
sacrifice. Oh! if we could only understand the blessedness of sacrifice!
Then we should find the peace passing all understanding that comes of
passion overcome, of sorrow generously accepted!”
He held out his hand to say good-by. Franceline laid hers in it; but
did not remove it at once. “Father,” she said, with her eyes lifted in
childlike fearlessness to his, “one would think, to hear you speak of
passion overcome and sorrow accepted, that you knew something about them!
I sometimes wish you did. It would make it easier to me to believe in the
possibility of overcoming and accepting.”
A change came over Father Henwick’s face for one moment; it was not a
cloud nor a tremor, but the shadow of some deep emotion that must pass
away before he could answer. Then the words came with grave simplicity,
and low, as if they were a prayer:
“Believe, then, my child, and take courage; I have gone through it all!”
He turned and walked back into the wood. Franceline stood looking after
him through gathering tear-drops. Never had he seemed so far above her,
so removed from human weakness, as at this moment, when he so humbly
acknowledged kindred with it.
* * * * *
A pleasant surprise met Franceline on her return home. Sir Simon was at
The Lilies, and loudly expressing his indignation at not finding her
there to greet him. She arrived, however, before he had quite divested
himself of a cargo of small boxes which he had carried down himself in
order to have the delight of witnessing her curiosity and pleasure in
their contents. There was hardly any event which could have given her so
much pleasure in her present frame of mind as the sight of her kind old
friend; and she satisfied him to the full by her affectionate welcome
and her delight in all his presents. He had not forgotten her favorite
_friandise_--chocolate bonbons--and she set to nibbling them at once,
in spite of Angélique’s protest against such a proceeding close on
dinner-time.
“Va, petite gourmande!” exclaimed the _bonne_, tramping off to her
kitchen, in high glee to see Franceline’s gayety and innocent greediness
over the dainty.
Sir Simon was, if possible, in brighter spirits than ever; like Job’s
friends, he was “full of discourse,” so that there was nothing to do
but listen and laugh as the current rippled on. He had a deal to tell
about his rambles in the Pyrenees, and a whole budget of adventures to
retail, and anecdotes about odd people he had come across in all sorts
of out-of-the-way places. Nothing checked the pleasant flow until M. de
la Bourbonais had the unlucky inspiration to inquire for Lady Rebecca’s
health; whereupon the baronet raised his right hand and let it fall
again with an emphatic gesture, shook his head, and compressed his
lips in ominous silence. Raymond, who held the key of the pantomime,
gathered therefrom that Lady Rebecca had for the six-and-thirtieth
time rallied from the jaws of death, and plunged her long-suffering
heir once more into dejection and disappointment. He knew what was
in store for his private ear, and heaved a sigh. “But the present
hour shall be a respite,” Sir Simon seemed to say; and he quitted the
subject abruptly, and proceeded to catechise Franceline on her behavior
since his departure. He was surprised and annoyed to find that she had
been to no parties; that nothing more exciting than that short visit
to Rydal had come of his deep-laid scheme with the dowager; and that
there had been no rivalry of gallant suitors attacking the citadel of
The Lilies. He had been rather nervous before meeting her; for, though
it had been made quite clear to him by Raymond’s letters that _he_ had
received no crushing blow of any description, Sir Simon had a lurking
fear that recent events might have left a deeper shadow on his daughter’s
existence than he was conscious of. Her aspect, however, set him at
ease on this score. He could hardly have lighted on a more favorable
moment for the confirmation of his sanguine hopes regarding Franceline’s
heart-wholeness. True, she had been crying, only half an hour ago,
bitter, burning tears enough; but her face retained no trace of them, and
it still held the glow of inward triumph that Father Henwick’s last words
had called up into her eyes, and her cheeks had got a faint color from
the rapid walking. Sir Simon breathed freely as he took note of these
outward signs; he could indulge in a little chaffing without remorse or
_arrière-pensée_. He wanted to know, merely as a matter of curiosity, how
many hearts she had broken in his absence--how many unfortunates had been
mortally struck as they passed within reach of her arrows on the wayside.
Franceline protested that she carried no quiver, and had not inflicted a
scratch on any one. Humph! Sir Simon invited her to convey that answer to
the marines.
“And how about Ponsonby Anwyll? Has he been here lately?”
“No; he called twice, but papa and I were out.”
“Poor devil! so much the better for him! But he won’t have the sense to
keep out of harm’s way; he’ll be at it again before long.”
Franceline gave one of her merry laughs--she was in a mood to enjoy the
absurdity of the joke--and went to take off her things; for Angélique put
in her head to say that dinner was ready.
Things fell quickly into their old course at the Court. There was a
procession of morning callers every day, and pleasant friendly dinners,
and a few men down in relays to shoot. Sir Simon insisted on M. de la
Bourbonais coming to join them frequently, and bringing Franceline;
he had established a precedent, and he was not going to let it drop.
Franceline, on the whole, was glad of the excitement; she was determined
to use everything that could help her good resolutions; and the necessity
for seeming to enjoy soon led to her doing so in reality. After the
stillness of her little home-life, filled as it was with restless voices
audible to no ear but hers, the gay stir of the Court was welcome. It
was a pleasurable sensation, too, to feel herself the object of admiring
attentions from a number of agreeable gentlemen, to be deferred to and
made much of, as if she were a little queen amongst them all. Sir Simon
was more indulgent than ever, and spoiled her to his heart’s content.
Father Henwick, who was kept _au courant_ of what was going on, could
not find it in his heart to oppose what seemed to be an innocent
diversion of her thoughts.
It was, therefore, anything but a welcome break when Lady Anwyll came
down one morning, accompanied by Sir Simon, to announce her intention
of carrying off her friend the next day to Rydal. Franceline fought off
while she could, but Sir Simon pooh-poohed her excuses about not liking
to leave her father, and so forth; _he_ was there now to look after him,
and she must go. So she went. Rydal had a dreadful association in her
mind, and she shrank from going there as from revisiting the scene of
some horrible tragedy. She shrank, too, from leaving her father. Of late
they had been more bound up in their daily life than ever; she had coaxed
him into accepting her services as an amanuensis, and he had quickly
grown so used to them that he was sure to miss her greatly at his work.
There was nothing, moreover, in the inmates of Rydal to compensate her
for the sacrifice; they were not the least interesting. It was always
the same good-natured petting from Lady Anwyll, as if she were a kitten
or a baby. She knew exactly what the conversation would be--gossip
about local trifles, about the family, especially Ponce, his boots, his
eccentricities, his pet dishes, his pranks in the regiment; the old tune
played over and over again on the same string. As to Ponce himself,
Franceline knew the big hussar already by heart; he would do his best to
be entertaining, and would only be awkward and commonplace. Nothing at
Rydal, in fact, rose above the dead-level of Dullerton.
The dowager had some few young people in for a carpet-dance, in which
Franceline had to take her part, and did without any repugnance. Dancing
brought back certain memories that pierced her like steel blades; but
her heart was proof against the thrusts, and she defied them to wound
her. Lord Roxham was invited, and showed himself cordial and friendly,
but nothing more. He said he had been called away to London soon after
they last met, or else he would have profited by M. de la Bourbonais’
permission to call at The Lilies; he hoped that the authorization might
still hold good.
“Oh! yes; do come. I shall be so glad to see you,” was the frank and
unaffected reply.
Lady Anwyll had meantime felt rather aggrieved at Lord Roxham’s behavior.
Her little scheme had gone off so swimmingly at first she could not
understand why it had suddenly collapsed in its prosperous course,
and come to a dead halt. At any rate, she would give him one more
chance. The young legislator seemed in no violent hurry to improve it.
He danced a couple of times with Franceline, and once with two other
young girls, and then subsided to dummy whist with the rector of Rydal
and his wife, leaving Franceline to the combined fascinations of Mr.
Charlton and Ponce, who usurped her between them. The latter bestowed
such an unequal share of a host’s courtesy on the young French girl,
indeed, that his mother felt it incumbent on her to explain to the other
young ladies that Mlle. de la Bourbonais was a foreigner; therefore
Ponce, being so good-natured, paid her particular attention. And he
certainly did--not only on that occasion, but while she remained. He
was continually hovering about her like a huge overshadowing bird
whose wings were always in the way of its movements. He tripped over
footstools in attempting to place them under her feet; but then he
was always so thankful that it was himself, not her, he nearly upset!
He spilt several cups of tea in handing them to her, and was nearly
overcome with gratitude when he saw the carpet had got the contents,
and that her pretty muslin frock was safe! He _would_ hold an umbrella
open over her because it looked so uncommonly like rain; and it was
such a mercy to have only spoiled her bonnet and made a hole in her
veil, when he might so easily have run the point into her eye. Ponce,
like many wiser men, had endless satisfaction in the contemplation of
the blunders he might have committed and did not. Yet, with all his
boyish awkwardness, Franceline was growing very fond of him. He was so
thoroughly kind-hearted, and so free from the taint of conceit; and then
there was an undeniable enjoyment in the sense of being cared for, and
thought of, and watched over; and it was all done in a naïve, boyish
way, and with a brotherly absence of compliment or constraint that left
her free to accept it without any sense of undue obligation, or the fear
of being called upon to repay it except by being pleased and grateful.
When he followed her into the conservatory with a shawl and wrapped it
round her unceremoniously, she looked up at his fresh, honest face, and
said, almost as if he had been a woman: “I wish I had you for a brother,
Captain Anwyll!” He got very red, and was fumbling somewhere in his mind
for an answer, when his mother called to him for the watering-pot; Ponce
seized it, and, dashing out a sudden shower-bath upon the dowager’s
dress, narrowly escaped drenching Franceline’s. But it did escape. What a
lucky dog he was!
How pleasant it was riding home in the fresh afternoon! Lady Anwyll came
in the carriage, while Franceline and Capt. Anwyll cantered on before.
Nothing was likely to have happened at The Lilies during her absence;
but as they drew near she grew impatient and rode at a pace, as if she
expected wonderful tidings at the ride’s end. The air was so clear that
Dullerton, yet a mile off, sent its hum of life towards the riders with
sharp distinctness. The panting of the train, as it moved out of the
station, sounded close by; every street cry and tinkling cart-bell rang
out like a chime. Soon the soft cooing of the doves came wafted above the
distant voice of the town; and when the travellers came within sight of
The Lilies, the flock flew to greet Franceline, wheeling round high up in
the air several times before alighting on her shoulders and outstretched
wrist. Then came her father’s delighted exclamation, as he hurried down
the little garden-walk, and Angélique’s affectionate embrace. And once
more the small, still home-life, that was so sweet and so rich in a
restored joy, recommenced. Franceline devoted hours every day now to
working with her father, and soon she became almost as much absorbed in
the work as he was. Sometimes, indeed, she hindered rather than helped,
stopping him in the midst of his dictation to demand an explanation; but
Raymond never chided her or grudged the delay. Her fresh young eyesight
and diligent, nimble hand were invaluable to him, and he wondered how he
had got on so long without them.
* * * * *
Lord Roxham redeemed his promise of calling at The Lilies. He talked
a good deal to Raymond about politics and current events, saying very
little to Franceline, who sat by, stitching away at some bit of plain
sewing. This was just what she liked. Her father was entertained and
interested. A breeze from the outer world always refreshed him, though
he was hardly conscious of it, still less of needing any such reviving
incident in his quiet, monotonous existence; but Franceline always hailed
it with thankfulness for him, and was well content to remain in the shade
now while the visitor devoted himself to amusing her father. Was it
fancy, or did she, on glancing up suddenly from her needle-work, detect
an expression, half compassionate, half searching, in Lord Roxham’s face,
as he looked fixedly at her? Whether it was fancy or not, her eyes fell
at once, and the blood mantled her cheek; she did not venture to let her
gaze light on him again, and it was with a sense of shyness that she
shook hands with him at parting.
Ponsonby Anwyll was now a frequent visitor at The Lilies, sometimes
coming alone, sometimes with Sir Simon; and it was a curious coincidence,
if quite accidental, that he generally made his appearance as Franceline
was on the point of starting for her ride; and as he was always on
horseback, there was no conceivable reason why he should not join the
party. The burly hussar was a safer companion in the saddle than in the
drawing-room; he rode with the masterly ease of a cavalryman, and, the
road being free from the disturbing influence of tea-trays and chairs,
he spilt nothing and upset nobody, and Franceline was always glad of
his company. She was too inexperienced and too much absorbed in other
thoughts to forecast any possible results from this state of things.
Ponsonby continued the same familiar, kind, brother-like manner to her;
was mightily concerned in keeping her out of the bad bits of road, and
out of the way of the cattle that might be tramping to market and prove
offensive to her mettlesome pony. He never aimed at making himself
agreeable, only useful. But the eyes of Dullerton looked on at all this
brotherly attention, and drew its own conclusion. The Langrove young
ladies, of whom somehow she had of late seen less than ever, grew excited
to the highest pitch about it, and were already discussing how many of
them would be bridemaids at the wedding, if bridemaids there were. Most
likely Sir Simon would settle that and probably give the dresses. Even
discreet Miss Merrywig could not forbear shaking her finger and her
barrel curls at Franceline one day when the latter hurried off to get
ready for her ride, with the excuse that Sir Simon and Capt. Anwyll were
due at three o’clock. But Franceline knew by this time what Dullerton
was, and what it could achieve in the way of gossip; spinning a yarn a
mile long out of a thread the length of your finger. She only laughed,
and mentally remarked how little people knew. They would be marrying her
to Sir Simon next, when Ponsonby rejoined his regiment and was seen no
more at her saddle-bow.
The three had set out for a ride one afternoon, when, as they were
dashing along at full tilt, Sir Simon pulled up with a strong formula of
exclamation.
“What’s the matter?” cried Sir Ponsonby, plunging back heavily, while
Franceline reined in Rosebud, and turned in some alarm to see what had
occurred.
“If I have not actually forgotten all about Simpson, who comes down from
London by appointment this afternoon! I dare say he’s waiting for me by
this, and he must return by the 5:20. I must leave you, and post home as
quick as Nero will carry me.” And with a “by-by” to Franceline and a nod
to Capt. Anwyll, coupled with an injunction not to let her ride too fast
and to keep her out of mischief, the baronet turned his horse’s head and
galloped away, desiring the groom to follow on with the others.
They went on at a good pace until they reached the foot of a gentle
ascent, when both of one accord fell into a walk. For the first time in
their intercourse Franceline was conscious of a certain vague awkwardness
with Capt. Anwyll; of casting about for something to say, and not finding
anything. The place was perfectly solitary, the woods on one side,
the fields sloping down to the river on the other. The groom lagged
respectfully a long way behind, quite out of ear-shot, often out of
sight; for the road curved and wheeled abruptly every now and then, and
hid the foremost riders from his view. Ponsonby broke the silence:
“Miss Franceline”--he would call her Miss Franceline, because it was
easier and shorter--“I have something on my mind that I want badly to say
to you. I’ve been wanting to say it for some time. I hope it won’t make
you angry?”
“I can’t say till I hear it; but if you are in doubt about it, perhaps
it would be safer not to say it,” remarked Franceline, beginning to
tremble ominously.
“I wouldn’t vex you for anything in the world! ’Pon my honor I wouldn’t!”
protested Ponce warmly. “But, you see, I don’t know whether what I’m
going to say will vex you or not.”
“Then don’t say it; you are sure not to vex me then,” was the encouraging
advice, and she devoutly hoped he would take it. But he was not so minded.
“That’s true,” he assented; “but then, you see, it might please you. I’m
half afraid it won’t, though, only I can’t be sure till I try.” After
musing a moment, in obvious perplexity, he resumed, speaking rapidly, as
if he had made up his mind to bolt it all out and take the consequences.
“I’m not a puppy--my worst enemy won’t accuse me of that; but I’m not a
bad fellow either, as my mother and all the fellows in the Tenth will
tell you; and the fact is, I’ve grown very fond of you, Miss Franceline,
and if you’ll take me as I am I’ll do my best to be a good husband to you
and to make you happy.”
He said it quickly, as if he were reciting a lesson got by heart, and
then came to a dead halt and “paused for a reply.” He might have paused
long enough, if he had not at last turned round and read his fate in
Franceline’s scared, white face and undisguised agitation.
“Oh! now, don’t say no before you think it over!” entreated the young
man. “I know you’re ten times too good for me; but, for that matter,
you’re too good for the best fellow that ever lived. I said so myself
to Sir Simon only this morning. But I do love you with all my heart,
Franceline; and if only you could care for me ever so little to begin
with, I’d be satisfied, and you’d make me the happiest man alive!”
Franceline had now recovered her self-possession, and was able to speak,
though she still trembled.
“I am so sorry!” she exclaimed. “I never dreamed of this; indeed I did
not! I dare say I have been very selfish, very thoughtless; but it was
not wilful. I am very unhappy to have given you pain!”
“Oh! don’t say that. You’ll make me miserable if you say that!” pleaded
Ponsonby. “Of course you never thought of it. It’s great impudence of me
to think of it, I have so little to offer you! But if you don’t quite
hate the sight of me, I’m sure I could make you a devoted husband, and
love you better than many a cleverer fellow. I’ve been fond of you from
the first, and so has my mother.”
“You are both very good to me; I am very, very grateful!” The tears
rose to her eyes, and with a frank, impulsive movement she held out her
hand to him. Ponsonby bent from the saddle and raised it to his lips,
although it was gloved. If he had not been over-sanguine at heart and a
trifle stupid, poor fellow, he would have felt that it was all over with
him. The little hand lay with cold, sisterly kindness in his grasp, and
Franceline looked at him with eyes that were too kind and pitying to
promise anything more than sisterly pity and gratitude.
“I cannot, I cannot. You must never think of it any more. Do you not see
that it is impossible? I am a Catholic!”
“Pshaw! as if that mattered a whit! I mean as if it need make any
difference between us! I don’t mind it a pin--’pon my honor I don’t!
I said so to the count. We’ve settled all that, in fact, and if he’s
satisfied to trust me why will not you?”
“Then you have spoken to my father?”
“Oh! yes; that was the right thing, Sir Simon told me, as he was a
Frenchman.”
“And what did he say to you?”
“He said that if you said yes, he was quite willing to give you to me. I
wanted to come to settlements at once--I only wish I was ten times better
off!--but he would not hear a word about that until I had consulted you.
Only, he said he would be glad to receive me as his son; he did indeed,
Franceline!” She was looking straight before her, her eyes dilated, her
whole face aglow with some strong emotion that his words seemed to have
stirred in her.
“You remember,” continued Ponsonby, “that you said to me once you
would like to have me for a brother? Well, it will be nearly the same
thing. You would get used to me as a husband after a while; you would,
Franceline!”
“Never, never, never!” she repeated, not passionately, but with a calm
emphasis that made Ponsonby’s heart die within him. He could not find a
word to oppose to the strong, quiet protest.
“No, it is all a mistake,” said Franceline. “I don’t know who is to
blame--I suppose I am. I should not have let you come so often; but you
were so kind, and I have so few people to care for me; and when one is
sad at heart, kindness is so welcome! But I should have thought of you; I
have been selfish!”
“No, no, you have not been selfish at all; it’s all my doing and my
fault,” affirmed the young man. “I wish I had held my tongue a little
longer. My mother will come and see you to-morrow; she will explain it
all, and how it sha’n’t make any trouble to you, my being a Protestant.”
“She must not come,” said Franceline with decision; “there is nothing
to explain. I am sincerely grateful to her and to you; but I have only
gratitude to give you. I hope with all my heart that you may soon forget
me and any pain I am causing you, and that you may meet with a wife who
will make you happier than I could have done.”
Ponsonby was silent for a few moments, and then he said, speaking with a
certain hesitation and diffidence:
“I could be satisfied to wait and to go on hoping, if I were sure of one
thing:… that you did not care for anybody else. Do you?”
She flashed a glance of indignant pride at him.
“What right have you to put such a question to me? I tell you I do not
care for you, and that I will never marry you! You have no right to ask
me any more.”
Ponsonby recoiled as if a flash of lightning had forked out of the cold,
gray sky. “Good heavens! I did not mean to offend you. I declare solemnly
I did not!”
But he had touched a vibrating chord unawares, and set every fibre in her
heart thrilling and every pulse throbbing; and the disturbance was not to
be laid by any words that he could utter. Franceline turned homewards,
and they did not exchange a word until they reached The Lilies and
Ponsonby was assisting her to alight.
“Say you forgive me!” he said, speaking very low and penitently.
She had already forgiven him but not herself.
“I do, and I am sorry for being so impetuous. Good-by!”
“And my mother may come and see you to-morrow?”
“No, no! It is no use; it is no use! I say again I wish you were my
brother, Sir Ponsonby, but, as you care to remain my friend, never speak
to me again of this.”
He pressed the hand she held out to him; the groom backed up to take the
reins of her horse, and Ponsonby rode away with a thorn in his honest
heart.
Miss Merrywig was within, chatting and laughing away with the count.
Franceline was not in a mood to meet the garrulous old lady or anybody;
so she went straight to her room, and only came down when the visitor was
gone.
“Father,” she said, going up behind him and laying a hand on each
shoulder, “what is this Sir Ponsonby tells me? That you are tired of your
_clair-de-lune_, and want to get rid of her?”
M. de la Bourbonais drew down the two trembling hands, and clasped them
on his breast, and lifted his head as if he would look at her.
“It would not be losing her, but gaining a son, who would take care of
her when I am gone! She has not thought of that!”
“No; and she does not wish to think of it! I will live with you while I
live. I don’t care to look beyond that; nor must you, petit père. But I
am very sorry for Sir Ponsonby. You must write and tell him so, and that
he must not come any more--until he has forgotten me; that you cannot
give me up.”
“My cherished one! Let us talk about this matter; it is very serious. We
must not do anything rashly.” He tried to unclasp her hands and draw her
to his side; but she locked them tighter, and laid her cheek on his head.
“Petit père, there is nothing to talk about; I will never marry him or
anybody!”
“My child, thou speakest without reflection. Captain Anwyll is a good,
honorable man, and he loves thee, and it would be a great comfort to me
to see thee married to him, and not to leave thee friendless and almost
penniless whenever God calls me away. I understand it has taken thee by
surprise, and that thou canst not accept the idea without some delay and
getting used to it; but we must not decide so important a matter hastily.
Come, sit down, and let us discuss it.”
“No, father,” she answered in a tone of determination that was quite
foreign to her now, and reminded him of the wilful child of long ago;
“there is no use in discussing what is already decided. I will never
marry Ponsonby--or anybody. Why, petit père, do you forget that he is a
Protestant?”
“Nay, I have forgotten nothing; that has been all arranged. He is most
liberal about it; consents to leave you to … to have everything your own
way in that respect, and assures me that it shall make no difference
whatever to you, his not being of your religion.”
“No difference, father! No difference to a wife that her husband should
be a heretic! You cannot be in earnest. What blessing could there be on
such a marriage?”
“But you would soon convert him, my little one; you would make a good
Catholic of him before the year was out,” said M. de la Bourbonais.
“Think of that!”
“And suppose it were the other way, and that he made a good Protestant
of me? It is no more than I should deserve for my presumption. You know
what happens to those who seek the danger.…”
“Oh! that is a different thing; that warning applies to those who seek
it rashly, from vain or selfish motives,” protested Raymond, moving his
spectacles, as he always did instinctively when his argument was weak;
and he knew right well that now it was slipping into sophistry.
“I cannot see anything but a selfish motive in marrying against the
express prohibition of the church and without any affection for the
person, but simply because he could give you a position and the good
things of this life,” said Franceline.
“The prohibition is conditional,” persisted Raymond, “and those
conditions would be scrupulously fulfilled; and as to there not being the
necessary affection, there is enough on his side for both, and his love
would soon beget thine.”
“Father, it is no use. I am grieved to contradict you; but I cannot,
cannot do this to please you. You must write and say so to Capt. Anwyll;
you must indeed.”
Raymond heaved a sigh. He felt as powerless as an infant before this new
wilfulness of his _clair-de-lune_; it was foolish as well as imprudent to
yield, but he did not know how to deal with it. There was honest truth
on her side; no subterfuges could baffle the instinctive logic of her
childlike faith.
“We will let things remain as they are for a few days, and then, if thou
dost still insist, I will write and refuse the offer,” he said, seeking a
last chance in temporizing.
“No, petit père; if you love me, write at once. It is only fair to Sir
Ponsonby, and it will set my mind at rest. Here, let me find you a pen!”
She chose one out of a number of inky goose-quills on the little Japan
tray, and thrust it playfully between his fingers.
The letter was written, and Angélique was forthwith despatched with it to
the pillar at the park gate.
During the remainder of the afternoon Franceline worked away diligently
at the Causes of the French Revolution, and spent the evening reading
aloud. But M. de la Bourbonais could not so lightly dismiss the day’s
incident from his thoughts. He had experienced a moment of pure joy and
unutterable thankfulness when Ponsonby had come in and stammered out
his honest confession of love, and pleaded so humbly with the father to
“take his part with Miss Franceline.” The pleasure was all the greater
for being a complete surprise. Sir Simon had cautiously resolved to
have no hand in negotiating between the parties; he had let things take
their course from the first, determined not to interfere, but clearly
foreseeing the issue. Raymond was bewildered by Franceline’s rejection
of the proposed marriage. He did not try much to explain it to himself;
it was a puzzle that did not come within the rule and compass of his
philosophy--a young girl refusing to be married when an eligible husband
presented himself for her father’s acceptance. He heaved many a deep sigh
over it, as his anxious gaze rested on the golden-haired young head bent
over the desk. But he did not ask any questions.
Sir Simon came down next morning in high displeasure. He was angry,
disappointed, aggrieved. Here he had been at considerable pains of
ingenuity and forethought to provide a model husband for Franceline,
a young fellow whom any girl ought to jump at--high-principled,
unencumbered rent-roll, good-looking, good-tempered--and the little
minx turns up her nose at him, and sends him to the right-about! Such
perverseness and folly were not to be tolerated. What did she mean by it?
What did she see amiss in Anwyll? Sir Simon was for having her up for a
round lecture. But Raymond would not allow this. He might groan in his
inmost heart over Franceline’s refusal, but he was not going to let her
be bullied by anybody; not even by Sir Simon. He stood up for his child,
and defended her as if he had fully approved of her conduct.
“I’ll tell you what it is, Bourbonais, you’re just as great a fool as
she is; only she is a child, and knows nothing of life, and can’t see
the madness of what she is doing. But you ought to know better. I have
no patience with you. When one thinks of what this marriage would do for
both of you--lifting you out of penury, restoring your daughter to her
proper position in the world, and securing her future, so that, if you
were called away to-morrow, you need have no care or anxiety about her!
And to think of your backing her up in rejecting it all!”
“I did not back her up in it. I deplore her having done so,” replied
Raymond. “But I will not coerce her; her happiness is dearer to me than
her interest or my own.”
“What tomfoolery! As if her interest and her happiness were not identical
in this case! A man who is fond of her, and rich enough to give her
everything in life a girl could wish for! What does she want besides?”
demanded Sir Simon angrily.
“I believe she wants nothing, except to be left with her old father. She
does not care for Capt. Anwyll,” said Raymond; but his French mind felt
this was very weak argument.
“The devil she doesn’t! Who does she care for?” retorted the baronet.
But he had no sooner uttered the words than he regretted them; they
seemed to recoil on him like a stone flung too near. He seized his hat,
and, muttering impatiently something about the nonsense of giving into
childish fancies, etc., strode out of the cottage, and did not show
himself there for several days.
He was pursued by that question of his own, “Who did Franceline care
for?” and made uncomfortable by the persistency with which it kept
dinning in his ears. He had made up his mind long ago that the failure
of his first matrimonial plot had had no serious effect on her heart or
spirits. She was looking very delicate when he came back, but that was
the dulness of the life she had been leading during his absence. She
had picked up considerably since then. It was plain to everybody she
had; her spirits were better. There was certainly nothing wrong in that
direction. How could there be when he, Sir Simon, so thoroughly desired
the contrary, and did so much to cheer up the child--and himself into
the bargain--and make her forget any impression that unlucky Clide might
have made? Still, no matter how emphatically he answered it, the tiresome
question kept sounding in his ears day after day. He could stand it no
longer. He must go and see them at The Lilies--see Franceline, and read
on her innocent young face that all was peace within, and cheer up his
own depressed spirits by a talk with Raymond. Nobody listened to him and
sympathized with him as Raymond did. He had no worries of his own to
distract him, for one thing; and if he had, he was such a philosophical
being he would carry them to the moon and leave them there. Sir Simon was
blessed with no such happy faculty. He could forget his troubles for a
while under the stimulating balm of cheerful society and generous wine;
but as soon as he was alone they were down on him like an army of ants,
stinging and goading him. Things were very gloomy just now, and he could
less than ever dispense with the opiate of sympathetic companionship.
Lady Rebecca had taken a fresh start, and was less likely to depart than
she had been for the last ten years. The duns, who watched her ladyship’s
fluctuations between life and death with almost as sincere and breathless
an interest as her heir, had got wind of this, and were up and at him
again, hunting him like a hare--the low, grasping, insolent hounds! His
revived money annoyances made him the more irascible with Franceline for
throwing away her chance of being for ever saved and protected from the
like. But he would harp no more on that string.
He had been into Dullerton on horseback, and, overtaking the postman on
his way home, he stopped to take his letters, and then asked if there
were any for The Lilies. He was going there, and would save the postman
the walk that far.
“Thank you, sir! There is one for the count.” And the man held up a large
blue envelope, like a lawyer’s letter, which Sir Simon thrust into his
pocket. He left his horse at the Court, and walked on through the park,
reading his letters as he went. Their contents were not of the most
agreeable, to judge by the peevish and angry ejaculations that the reader
emitted in the course of their perusal. He had not done when he reached
the cottage.
“Here’s a letter for you, Bourbonais; I’ll finish mine while you’re
reading it.” He handed the blue envelope to his friend, and, flinging
himself into a chair, became again absorbed and ejaculatory.
M. de la Bourbonais, meanwhile, proceeded to open his official-looking
communication. He surveyed it with uplifted eyebrows, examined well the
large red seal, and scrutinized the handwriting of the address, before
he tore it open. His eye ran quickly over the page. A nervous twitch
contracted his features; his hand shook as if a string at his elbow had
been rudely pulled; but he controlled all further sign of emotion, and,
after reading the contents twice over, silently folded the letter and
replaced it in the envelope. Sir Simon had seen nothing; he was deep in
suppressed denunciations of some rascally dun.
“Hang me if I know what’s to be the end of it, or the end of me--an ounce
of lead in my skull, most likely!” he burst out, ramming the bundle of
offending documents into his coat-pocket. “The brutes are in league to
drive me mad!”
“Has anything new happened?” inquired the count anxiously. “I hoped
things had arranged themselves of late?”
“Not they! How can they when these vampires are sucking the blood of one?
It’s pretty much like sucking a corpse!” he laughed sardonically. “The
fools! If they would but have sense to see that it is their own interest
not to drive me to desperation! But they will goad me to do something
that will make an end of their chance of ever being paid!”
M. de la Bourbonais ought to have been hardened to this sort of thing;
but he was not. The vague threats and dark innuendoes always alarmed
him. He never knew but that each crisis which called them out might be
the supreme one that would bring about their fulfilment. At such moments
he had not the heart to rebuke Sir Simon and add the bitterness of
self-reproach to his excited feelings. His look of keen distress struck
Sir Simon with compunction.
“Oh! it will blow off, as it has done so often before, I suppose,” he
said, tossing his head. “Here’s a letter from L---- to say he is coming
down next week with a whole houseful of men to shoot. I’ve not seen
L---- for an age. He’s a delightful fellow; he’ll cheer one up.” And the
baronet heaved a sigh from the very depths of his afflicted spirit.
“Mon cher, is it wise to be asking down crowds of people in this way?”
asked Raymond dubiously.
“I did not ask them! Don’t I tell you they have written to invite
themselves?”
It was true; but Sir Simon forgot how often he had besought his friends
to do just what they were now doing--to write and say when they could
come, and to bring as many as they liked with them. That had always been
the way at the Court; and he was not the man to belie its old traditions.
But Raymond, who had also his class of noble traditions, could not see
it.
“Why not write frankly, and, without explaining the precise motive, say
that you cannot at present receive any one?”
Sir Simon gave an impatient pshaw!
“Nonsense, my dear Bourbonais, nonsense! As if a few fellows more or less
signified that”--snapping his fingers--“at the end of the year! Besides,
what the deuce is the good of having a place at all, if one can’t have
one’s friends about one in it? Better shut up at once. It’s the only
compensation a man has; the only thing that pulls him through. And then
the pheasants are there, and must be shot. I can’t shoot them all. But
it’s no use trying to make you take an Englishman’s view of the case. You
simply can’t do it.”
M. de la Bourbonais agreed, and inwardly hoped he never might come to see
the case as his friend did. But, notwithstanding this, Sir Simon went on
discussing his own misfortunes, denouncing the rascality and rapacity of
the modern tradesman, and bemoaning the good old times when the world was
a fit place for a gentleman to live in. When he had sufficiently relieved
his mind on the subject, and drew breath, M. de la Bourbonais poured what
oil of comfort he could on his friend’s wounds. He spoke confidently
of the ultimate demise of Lady Rebecca, and expressed equal trust in
the powers of Mr. Simpson to perform once again the meteorological feat
known to Sir Simon as “raising the wind.” Under the influence of these
soothing abstractions the baronet cheered up, and before long Richard
was himself again. He overhauled Raymond’s latest work; read aloud some
notes on Mirabeau which Franceline had taken down at his dictation the
previous evening, and worked himself into a frenzy of indignation at the
historian’s partiality for that thundering demagogue. Raymond waxed warm
in defence of his hero; maintained that at heart Mirabeau had wished to
save the king; and almost lost his philosophical self-control when Sir
Simon called him the master-knave of the Revolution, a traitor and a
bully, and other hard names to the same effect.
“I wash my hands of you, if you are going to play panegyrist to that
pock-marked ruffian!” was the baronet’s concluding remark; and he
flung out his hands, as if he were shaking the contamination from his
fingers. Suddenly his eye fell upon the great blue letter, and, abruptly
dismissing Mirabeau, he said: “By the way, what a formidable document
that is that I brought you just now! Has it anything to do with the
Revolution?”
Raymond shook his head and smothered a rising sigh.
“It has been as good as a revolution to me, at any rate.”
“My dear Bourbonais, what is it? Nothing seriously amiss, I hope?”
exclaimed Sir Simon, full of alarmed interest.
The count took up the letter and handed it to him.
“Good heavens! Bankrupt! Can pay nothing! How much had you in it?”
“Nearly two hundred--the savings of the last fourteen years,” replied M.
de la Bourbonais calmly.
“My dear fellow, I’m heartily sorry!” exclaimed his friend in an accent
of sincere distress; “with all my heart I’m sorry! And to think of
you having read this and said nothing, and I raving away about my own
troubles like a selfish dog as I am! Why did you not tell me at once?”
“What good would it have done?” Raymond shrugged his shoulders, and with
another involuntary sigh threw the letter on the table. “It’s hard,
though. I was so little prepared for it; the house bore such a good
name.…”
“I should have said it was the safest bank in the country. So it was,
very likely; only one did not reckon with the dishonesty of this scheming
villain of a partner--if it be true that he is the cause of it.”
“No doubt it is; why should they tell lies about it? The whole affair
will be in the papers one of these days, I suppose.”
“And you can stand there and not curse the villain!”
“What good would cursing him do? It would not bring back my poor
scrapings.” Raymond laughed gently. “I dare say his own conscience will
curse him before long--the unhappy man! But who knows what terrible
temptation may have driven him to the deed? Perhaps he got into some
difficulty that nothing else could extricate him from, and he may have
had a wife and children pulling at his conscience by his heart-strings!
Libera nos a malo, Domine!” And looking upwards, Raymond sighed again.
“What a strange being you are, Raymond!” exclaimed Sir Simon, eyeing him
curiously. “Verily, I believe your philosophy is worth something after
all.”
M. de la Bourbonais laughed outright. “Well, it’s worth nearly the money
to have brought you to that!”
“To see you stand there coolly and philosophize about the motives that
may possibly have led an unprincipled scoundrel to rob you of every penny
you possessed! Many a man has got a fit from less.”
“Many a fool, perhaps; but it would be a poor sort of man that such
a blow would send into a fit!” returned the count with mild contempt.
“But I must not be forgetful of the difference of conditions,” he added
quickly. “It all depends on what the money is worth to one, and what its
loss involves. I don’t want it at present. It was a little hoard for the
rainy day; and--qui sait?--the rainy day may never come!”
“No; Franceline may marry a rich man,” suggested the baronet, not with
any intent to wound.
“Just so! I may never want the money, and so never be the poorer for
losing it.”
“And supposing there was at this moment some pressing necessity for
it--that your child was in absolute need of it for some reason or
other--what then?” queried Sir Simon.
Raymond winced and started imperceptibly, as if a pain went through him.
“Thank heaven there is no necessity to answer that,” he said. “We were
taught to pray to be delivered from temptation; let us be thankful when
we are, and not set imaginary traps for ourselves.”
“Some men are, I believe, born proof against temptation; I should say you
are one of them, Bourbonais,” said his friend, looking steadily at him.
“You are mistaken,” replied Raymond quietly. “I don’t know whether any
human being may be born with that sort of fire-proof covering; but I
know for certain that I was not.”
“Can you, then, conceive yourself under a pressure of temptation so
strong as that your principles, your conscience, would give way? Can
you imagine yourself telling a deliberate lie, for instance, or doing a
deliberate wrong to some one, in order to save yourself--or, better, your
child--from some grievous harm?”
Raymond thought for a moment, as if he were poising a balance in his
mind before he answered; then he said, speaking with slow emphasis, as
if every word was being weighed in the scales: “Yes, I can fancy myself
giving way, if, at such a crisis as you describe, I were left to myself,
with only my own strength to lean on; but I hope I should not be left to
it. I hope I should ask to be delivered from it.”
The humility of the avowal went further to deepen Sir Simon’s faith in
his friend’s integrity and in the strength of his principles than the
boldest self-assertion could have done. It informed him, too, of the
existence of a certain ingredient in Raymond’s philosophy which the
careless and light-hearted man of the world had not till then suspected.
“One thing I know,” he said, taking up his hat, and extending a hand to
M. de la Bourbonais: “if your conscience were ever to play you false, it
would make an end of my faith in all mankind--and in something more.”
TO BE CONTINUED.
QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE SYLLABUS.
DOCTRINAL AUTHORITY OF THE SYLLABUS.
FROM LES ETUDES RELIGIEUSES, ETC.
We enter on a work whose practical usefulness no one, we suspect, will
dispute, since it concerns perhaps the most memorable act of the reign
of Pius IX.--the Syllabus. There has been a great deal of discussion
about the Syllabus--much has been written on it in the way both of attack
and defence--but it is remarkable that it has scarcely been studied at
all. The remark was made by one of the editors of this review, Father
Marquigny, in the General Congress of Catholic Committees at Paris;
and, so true was it felt to be, that it provoked the approving laughter
of the whole assembly. But to pass by those who busy themselves about
this document without having read it, how many are there, even among
Catholics, who, after having read it, have only the most vague and
confused notions about it--how many who, if they were asked, “What does
the Syllabus teach you; what does it make obligatory on you?” would not
know what to answer! Thus is man constituted. He skims willingly over the
surface of things; but he has no fancy for stopping awhile and digging
underneath. If he is pleased with looking at a great many things, he does
not equally concern himself to gain knowledge; because there is no true
science without labor, and labor is troublesome. Yet nothing could be
more desirable for him than to come by this luminous entrance from the
knowledge to the possession of truth. Christian faith, when it is living
and active, necessarily experiences the desire of it; for, according to
the beautiful saying of S. Anselm, it is, by its very nature, a seeker of
science--of knowing: _Fides quærens intellectum_.
But, not to delay ourselves by these considerations, is it possible to
exaggerate the importance of the study of the Syllabus in the critical
circumstances in which we are placed? The uncertainty of the future; the
impossibility of discovering a satisfactory course in the midst of the
shadows which surround us; the need of knowing what to seize a firm hold
of in the formidable problems whose obscurity agitates, in these days,
the strongest minds; above all, the furious assaults of the enemies of
the church, and the authority belonging to a solemn admonition coming
to us from the chair of truth--all these things teach us plainly enough
how culpable it must be for us to remain indifferent and to neglect the
illumination offered to us. The teachings of the Vicar of Jesus Christ
deserve to be meditated on at leisure. It is this which inspires us with
a hope that our work will be favorably received. Truth, moreover, claims
the services of all, even of the feeblest, and we must not desert her
cause for fear our ability may not suffice for her defence.
Certainly, no one will expect us, here, to give an analytical exposition
of the eighty propositions condemned by Pius IX. Several numbers of the
_Etudes_ would scarcely suffice for that. General questions dominate
all others; it is to the careful solution of these that we shall devote
ourselves. They have always appeared to us to need clear and decisive
explanation. Often they are incorrectly proposed, oftener still they
are ill-defined. The object of our efforts will be to point out with
precision the limits within which they must be restrained, the sense
in which they must be accepted, and their necessary import; then, to
give them, as clearly as we are able, a solution the most sure and the
most conformable to first principles. If it should be objected that in
this we are entering on a wide theological field, we shall not deny it.
Proudhon, who desired anarchy in things, in principles--everywhere, in
fact, except in reasoning--averred that rigorous syllogism lands us
inevitably at theology. How, then, would it be possible not to find it
in the Syllabus? They, on the other hand, who are unceasing in their
violent attacks on this pontifical act, are they not the first to provoke
theological discussions? We are compelled to take their ground. As Mgr.
Dupanloup judiciously observed, in his pamphlet on the Encyclical of the
8th December: “It is needful to recur to first principles in a time when
thousands of men, and of women even, in France talk theology from morning
to night without knowing much about it.”
The first and fundamental question to be determined is: What is the
precise weight to be ascribed to the Syllabus, or, rather, what is its
doctrinal authority? On the manner in which we reply to this depends the
solution of numerous practical difficulties which interest consciences,
and which have more than once been the subject of the polemic of the
journals themselves. For example, are the decisions of the Syllabus
unchangeable; is it not possible that they should be modified some day;
is it certain they will never be withdrawn; are Catholics obliged to
accept them as an absolute rule of their beliefs, or may they content
themselves with doing nothing exteriorly in opposition to them? It is
understood, in fact, that if we are in presence of an act wherein the
successor of S. Peter exercises his sovereign and infallible authority,
the doctrine is irrevocably, eternally, fixed without possible recall;
and, by an inevitable corollary, the most complete submission, not of
the heart only, but also of the intelligence, becomes an obligation
binding on the conscience of the Catholic which admits of no reserve or
subterfuge. If, on the contrary, the step taken by the Pope is merely
an act of good administration or discipline, the door remains open for
hopes of future changes, the constraint imposed on the minds of men in
the interior forum is much less rigorous; a caviller would remain in
Catholic unity provided that, with the respectful silence so dear to the
Jansenists, he should also practise proper obedience. Now, the question,
in the terms in which we have stated it, although treated of at various
times by writers of merit, has not always been handled in a complete
manner. Writers have been too often contented with generalities, with
approaching only the question, and nothing has been precisely determined.
Some have asserted, with much energy, the necessity of this submission,
but they have not sufficiently defined its extent and nature. Others
have dwelt upon the deference and profound respect with which every
word of the Holy Father should be received, but, not having given any
further explanation, they have left us without the necessary means
for ascertaining what precisely they intended. Others have ventured
to insinuate that the Syllabus was perhaps merely an admonition, a
paternal advice benevolently given to some rash children, to which such
as are docile are happy to conform, without feeling themselves under
the absolute necessity of adopting it. Others, more adventurous still,
have been unwilling to see more in it than a mere piece of information,
an indication. According to these, Pius IX., wishing to notify to all
the bishops of Christendom his principal authoritative acts since the
commencement of his pontificate, had caused a list of them to be drawn
out, and to be forwarded to them. The Syllabus was this illustrious
catalogue, neither more nor less.
Is there any excuse to be found for this indecision on one hand,
presumption on the other? We do not think so; but they do, we must
confess, admit of a plausible explanation. And here, let it be observed,
we come to the very marrow of the difficulty. The Syllabus was drawn
out in an unusual form. It resembles no pontifical documents hitherto
published. When, in other times, the sovereign pontiffs wished to
stigmatize erroneous propositions, they did not content themselves
with reproducing the terms of them, in order to mark them out for the
reprobation of the people. They were always careful to explain the
motives of the judgment they delivered, and above all to formulate
with clearness and precision the judgment itself. Invariably, the
texts they singled out for condemnation were preceded by grave and
weighty words, wherein were explained the reasons for and the nature of
the condemnation. In the Syllabus, there is nothing of the kind. The
propositions, stated without commentary, are classified and distributed
under general titles; at the end of each of them we read the indication
of the Encyclical Letter, or pontifical Allocution, in which it had been
previously rebuked. For the rest, there is no preamble, no conclusion,
no discourse revealing the mind or intention of the pontiff, unless it
be the following words, inscribed at the head of the document, and which
we here give both in the Latin and in English: _Syllabus complectens
præcipuos nostræ ætatis errores, qui notantur in Allocutionibus
consistorialibus, in Encyclicis, aliisque Apostolicis Litteris
sanctissimi Domini Papæ Pii IX._--Table, or synopsis, containing the
principal errors of our epoch, noted in the consistorial Allocutions, the
Encyclicals, and other Apostolic Letters of our most Holy Father, Pope
Pius IX.
We may add, that nowhere does the Pope formally express an intention
of connecting the Syllabus with the bull _Quanta cura_, although he
issued them both on the same day, at the same hour, under the same
circumstances, and upon the same subjects. He left it to the public
common sense and to the faith of Christians to decide whether these two
acts are to be taken together, or whether they are to be considered as
isolated acts having no common tie between them.
Such are the facts. Minds, either troubled or prejudiced, or, may be,
too astute, have drawn from them consequences which, if we lay aside
accessory details of not much importance here, we may reduce to two
principal ones.
It has been stated--and they who hold this language form, as it were,
the extreme group of opposers--that the Apostolic Letters mentioned in
the Syllabus are the only documents which have authoritative force; that
the latter, on the contrary, has no proper weight of its own--absolutely
none, whether as a dogmatic definition, or as a disciplinary measure,
or even as a moral and intellectual direction. To these assertions, not
a little hazardous, have been added others whose rashness would fain be
hidden under the veil of rhetorical artifices. We will lift the veil, and
expose the naked assertions. The meaning of the Syllabus, it is stated,
must not be looked for in the Syllabus, but in the pontifical letters
whence it is drawn. The study of the letters may be useful; not only is
that of the Syllabus not so, but it is dangerous, because it often leads
to lamentable exaggerations. To know the true doctrines of Rome, we must
search the letters for them, not the Syllabus. In fact, to sum up all in
a few words, as a condemnation of error and a manifestation of truth, the
letters are all, the Syllabus nothing.
The other group, which we may describe as the moderates, knows how to
guard itself against excess. It does not diminish the authority of the
Syllabus to the extent of annihilation. Very far from it--it recognizes
it and proclaims it aloud; but, struck with the peculiar form given
to the act, it asserts that it is impossible to discover in it the
marks of a dogmatic definition, and, to borrow a stock expression, of
a definition _ex cathedra_. The Syllabus, it is said, is undoubtedly
something by itself--to deny it would be ridiculous and absurd. It has a
weight of its own; who would venture to dispute it? It may be termed, if
you please, an universal law of the church, so only that its pretensions
be not carried further, and that it does not claim to be considered an
infallible decision of the Vicar of Jesus Christ.
What, then, have we to do but to demonstrate that the Syllabus is
by itself, and independently of the pontifical acts which supply
the matter of it, a veritable teaching; that this teaching obliges
consciences because it issues from the infallible authority of the head
of the church? We shall not have omitted, it seems to us, any of the
considerations calculated to throw light on this important subject if,
after having thus followed it through all its windings and discussed all
its difficulties, we succeed in illustrating the triple character of the
pontifical act--its doctrinal character, its obligatory character, and
its character of infallibility.
To assert that Pius IX., when he denounced with so much firmness to the
Christian world the errors of our time, did not propose to teach us
anything, that he had no intention of instructing us, was, even at the
time of the appearance of the Syllabus, to advance a sufficiently hardy
paradox; but to state it, to maintain it, at this time of day, when we
are the fortunate witnesses of the effects produced by that immortal
act, is to speak against evidence. Undoubtedly--we stated it at the
commencement--the Syllabus is not sufficiently known nor sufficiently
studied. Little known as it may be, however, it cannot be denied that
it has already set right many ideas, and corrected and enlightened
many minds. Thanks to it, not learned men only and those who are close
observers of events, but Catholics generally, perceive more clearly the
dangers with which certain doctrines threaten their faith. They have been
warned, they keep themselves on their guard, they see more distinctly
the course they must follow and the shoals they must avoid. Pius IX. has
lighted a torch and placed it in their hands.
That being the case, what is the use of playing with words, as if
vain subtleties could destroy the striking evidence of this fact?
Let them say, as often as they please, “The Syllabus is only a
list, a catalogue, a table of contents, a memorial of previously
condemned propositions”--what good will they have done? What matter
these denominations, more or less disrespectful, if it be otherwise
demonstrated that this list, catalogue, or table of contents explains
to us exactly what we must believe or reject, and is imposed upon us
as a rule to which we owe subjection. The imprudent persons who speak
thus would seem never to have studied the monuments of our beliefs. Had
they considered their nature more attentively, would they have allowed
themselves to indulge in such intemperance of language? If they would
more closely examine them, their illusions would soon be dissipated. Are
not all the series of propositions condemned by the Popes, veritable
lists? Did not Martin V. and the Council of Constance, Leo X. and S.
Pius V., when they smote with their anathemas the errors of Wycliffe,
John Huss, Luther, Baïus, draw out catalogues? Are not the canons of
our councils tables in which are inscribed an abridgment, summary,
or epitome of the impious doctrines of heretics? Is not every solemn
definition, every symbol of the faith, a memorial designed to remind the
Christian what he is obliged to believe? It is, then, useless to shelter
one’s self behind words of doubtful meaning, and which can only perplex
the mind without enlightening it. It is to assume gratuitously the air of
men who wish to deceive others and to deceive themselves. What is the use
of it?
They are much mistaken who imagine themselves to be proposing a serious
difficulty when they demand how the Syllabus, which, before its
publication, existed already in the letters of the Holy Father, can
possibly teach us anything new? Let us, for the sake of argument, since
they ask it, reduce it to the humble _rôle_ of echo or reverberator, if
we may be pardoned such expressions. Let us suppose that its whole action
consists in repeating what has been already said. We ask if an echo does
not often convey to the ear a sound which, without it, would not have
been heard--if it does not sometimes send back the sound stronger, more
resounding, and even more distinct than the original voice? It is not a
new voice it brings to us. Be it so. But it does bring it to us in fact,
and is able to give it to us again fuller and more sonorous.
Comparison, it is true, is not reason. We will therefore abandon the
redundancy of figurative language, and reply directly to the question
put to us. What is wanted is to know what the Syllabus is in itself,
independently of the pontifical letters which are its original sources.
It is as follows:
It is, at least, a new promulgation, more universal, more authentic,
and therefore more efficacious, of previous condemnations. Now, it is
well known, it is a maxim of law, that a second promulgation powerfully
confirms and, in case of need, supersedes the first. The history of
human legislation is full of instances of this. When, by reason of the
negligence of men, of the difficulty of the times, of the inconstancy
or waywardness of peoples, a law has fallen into partial neglect and
oblivion, they in whom the sovereign power resides re-establish its
failing authority by promulgating it anew. It revives thus, and if it has
been defunct it receives a second life. What can the greater number of
Christians know of so many scattered condemnations, buried, one may say,
in the voluminous collection of pontifical encyclicals, if the Syllabus
had not revealed them? How could they respect them, how obey them? It was
necessary that they should hear them resound, in a manner, a second time,
in the utterance of the great Pontiff, in order to be able to submit anew
to their authority, and to resume a yoke of which many of them did not
know the very existence. The salvation of the church required this.
The Syllabus is, however, not only a new promulgation, it is often a
luminous interpretation of the original documents to which it relates;
an interpretation at times so necessary that, should it disappear,
from that moment the meaning of those documents would become, on many
points, obscure or at least doubtful. It is worthy of remark that in
order to deny the doctrinal value of the Syllabus the following fact
is relied on--that it is unaccompanied with any explanation, with any
reflections. “It is a dry nomenclature,” it has been said, “of which we
cannot determine either the character or the end.” Now, it happens to
be exactly here that brevity has brought forth light. The eighty-four
propositions, in fact, isolated from their context, appear to us more
exact, in stronger relief, more decidedly drawn. One may perceive that in
the bulls their forms were, as yet, slightly indistinct; here they detach
themselves vividly, and with remarkable vigor. And we wish that all our
readers were able to judge of this for themselves. They would better
understand, possibly, wherefore certain men insist with so much energy
on our abandoning the Syllabus and applying ourselves exclusively to the
sources--an excellent mode of preventing certain questions from becoming
too clear.
We will cite a few examples in illustration of our argument.
The second paragraph of the Syllabus has for its object the condemnation
of _moderate rationalism_. Some of the seven propositions contained in
it reproduce the doctrine of a man little known in France, but much
thought of in Germany--a kind of independent Catholic, who, before he
opposed himself to the church, from which he is now, we believe, quite
separated, having transferred his allegiance to the pastoral staff of the
aged Reinkens, wrote some works destined to sow among the students of
the university of Munich the damaged grain of infidel science. We allude
to M. Froschammer, a canon who has lost his hood, professor of misty
philosophy, as befits a doctor on the other side of the Rhine. Pius IX.
rebuked his errors in a letter addressed to the Archbishop of Munich the
12th December, 1862. We will lay aside the Syllabus, and take merely the
letter. We shall find in it only the condemnation of M. Froschammer and
his works; nothing whatever else. But who, in this our country, France,
has ever opened the works of M. Froschammer? The Catholic Frenchman
who might read the letter of Pius IX. knowing nothing of the condemned
works, would say to himself: “This Munich professor has doubtless written
according to his own fancy; he must have been rash, as every good German
is bound to be who loses himself in the shadowy mazes of metaphysics.
After all, there is nothing to show that he has written exactly my
opinions. Why should I trouble myself about the letter of Pius IX.? It
does not concern me.”
Another example. In Paragraph X. we find the same principle of modern
liberalism enunciated in the following manner: “In this our age, it is no
longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be considered as the
only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all others.” “Ætate hac
nostra, non amplius expedit religionem Catholicam haberi, tanquam unicam
status religionem, cæteris quibuscumque cultibus exclusis.” The document
to which we refer is a consistorial Allocution pronounced the 26th July,
1855, and it commences with these words, _Nemo vestrum_. What is this
Allocution? A solemn protest against the criminality of the Spanish
government, which, in contempt of its word and oath, of the rights of the
church and the eternal laws of justice, had dared to perjure itself by
abrogating, of its own single authority, the first and second articles
of the concordat. Pius IX., full of grief, speaks in these terms: “You
know, venerable brethren, how, in this convention, amongst all the
decisions relative to the interests of the Catholic religion, we have,
above all, established that this holy religion should continue to be the
only religion of the Spanish nation, to the exclusion of every other
worship.” The proposition of the Syllabus is not expressed in any other
way in the Allocution. A man of great ability, or a scientific man,
taking into account the facts, and weighing carefully the expressions of
the Pontiff, might perhaps detect it therein. But how many others would
it wholly escape! How many would not perceive it, or, if they should
chance to catch sight of it, would remain in suspense, uncertain which
was rebuked, the application of the doctrine or the doctrine itself! How
many, in short, would be unwilling to recognize, in these words, aught
but the sorrowful complaint of the Vicar of Jesus Christ outraged in his
dearest rights! Return, however, to the Syllabus, and that which was
obscure comes to light and manifests itself clearly. The two propositions
we have cited do not appear, in it, confused or uncertain. Detached, on
the contrary, from the particular circumstances which were calculated
to weaken their meaning, and clad in a form more lofty, more universal,
more abstract, they receive an unspeakable signification. No hesitation
is possible. It is no longer the doctrine of M. Froschammer, nor the
sacrilegious usurpations of the Spanish government, which are rebuked;
it is but the doctrine considered in itself and in its substance. And
since the Roman Pontiff, after having isolated it, fixes on it a mark of
reprobation by declaring it erroneous, he denounces it to all ages and
all people as deserving the everlasting censure of the church.
It is for this reason, as far as ourselves, at least, are concerned, we
shall never accept without restriction a phrase which we find, under one
form or other, in all directions, even from the pen of writers for whom
we entertain, in other respects, the highest esteem: “The Syllabus has
only a relative value, a value subordinate to that of the pontifical
documents of which it is the epitome.” No! We are unable to admit an
appreciation of it, in our opinion, so full of danger. We must not allow
ourselves to weaken truth if we would maintain its salutary dominion
over souls. They talk of the value of the Syllabus. What is meant by
this? Its authority? It derives that most undoubtedly from itself, and
from the sovereign power of him who published it. It is as much an act
of that supreme authority as the letters or encyclicals to which it
alludes. The meaning of the propositions it contains? Doubtless many of
these, if we thus refer to their origin, will receive from it a certain
illustration. Others, and they are not the fewest, will either lose there
their precision, or will rather shed more light upon it than they receive
from it. Between the two assertions--The pontifical letters explain the
Syllabus, and, The Syllabus explains the pontifical letters--the second
is, with a few exceptions, the most rigorously true. A very simple
argument demonstrates it. Suppose that, by accident or an unforeseen
catastrophe, one or other of these documents were to perish and not leave
any trace of its existence, which is the one whose preservation we should
most have desired, in order that the mind of Pius IX. and the judgment of
the church concerning the errors of our age might be transmitted more
surely to future generations?
Most fertile in subtleties is the mind of man when he wishes to escape
from a duty that molests him. We must not, consequently, be astonished
if many opponents of the Syllabus have lighted on ingenious distinctions
which allow of their almost admitting, in theory, the doctrines we have
just explained, whilst contriving to elude their practical consequences.
For that, what have they done? They have acknowledged the real authority
of this grand act in so far as it is a doctrinal declaration, or, if it
is preferred, a manifestation of doctrine; adding, nevertheless, that
the Pope has not imposed it on us in the way of obligation, but _only
in the way of guidance_. The expression, only in the way of guidance,
would have been a happy enough invention, had it been possible, in
matter so important, and in an act so solemn, to imagine a guidance
truly efficacious--such, for instance, as the Pope could not but wish
it to be--which would not be an obligation. But we ourselves must avoid
reasoning with too much subtlety, and content ourselves with opposing a
difficulty more specious than solid with a few positive proofs.
We interpose, in the first place, the very title of the Syllabus: “Table,
or abridgment, of the principal errors of our time, pointed out in
consistorial Allocutions,” etc. To which we add the titles of various
paragraphs: “Errors in relation to the church”; “Errors in relation to
civil society”; “Errors concerning natural and Christian morals,” etc.
For the Pope, the guardian and protector of truth, obliged by the duty
of his office to hinder the church from suffering any decline or any
alteration, to denounce to the Christian world a doctrine by inflicting
on it the brand of error, is evidently to forbid the employment of
it, and to command all the faithful to eschew it. What communion is
there between light and darkness, between life and death? There can
be no question about guidance or counsel when the supreme interest
is at stake. The duty speaks for itself. It is imposed by the nature
of things. When Pius IX. placed at the head of his Syllabus the word
“error,” and intensified it by adding words even more significant, when
he expressed himself thus, “Principal errors of this our age,” he as good
as said, “Here is death! Avoid it.” And if, in order still to escape
from the consequences, a distinction is attempted to be drawn between
an obligation created by the force of circumstances and an obligation
imposed by the legislator, we would wish it to be remembered that the
same Pius IX. uttered, in reference to the Syllabus, the following
memorable sentence: “When the Pope speaks in a solemn act, it is to be
taken literally; what he has said, he intended to say.” For our part, we
would say, “What the Pope has done, he intended to do.”
But what need is there of so much discussion? The proof of what we
have urged is written in express terms in the letter accompanying the
Syllabus--a letter signed by his eminence Cardinal Antonelli, secretary
of state, and intended to make known to the bishops the will of His
Holiness. It is sufficient to quote this decisive document, which we do
in full, on account of its importance:
“MOST REVEREND EXCELLENCY:
“Our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., profoundly solicitous for
the safety of souls and of holy doctrine, has never ceased,
since the commencement of his pontificate, to proscribe and to
condemn by his encyclicals, his consistorial Allocutions, and
other apostolic letters already published, the most important
errors and false doctrines, above all, those of our unhappy
times. But since it may come to pass that all the political
acts reach not every one of the ordinaries, it has seemed
good to the same sovereign Pontiff that a Syllabus should be
drawn out of these same errors, to be sent to all the bishops
of the Catholic world, _in order that these same bishops may
have before their eyes all the errors and pernicious doctrines
which have been reproved and condemned by him_. He has
therefore commanded me to see that this printed Syllabus be
sent to your most reverend excellency, on this occasion, and
at this time. When the same sovereign Pontiff, in consequence
of his great solicitude for the safety and well-being of the
Catholic Church, and of the whole flock which has been divinely
committed to him by the Lord, has thought it expedient to write
another encyclical letter to all the Catholic bishops, thus
executing, as is my duty, with all befitting zeal and respect,
the orders of the same Pontiff, I hasten to send to your
excellency this Syllabus with this letter.”
This Syllabus, placed by the order of the Holy Father “before the eyes
of all the bishops,” what else is it, we ask, than the text of the
law brought under the observation of the judges charged with the duty
of causing it to be executed? What is it except a rule to which they
owe allegiance, and from which they must not swerve? They must not
lose sight of it. Wherefore? Because it is their duty to be careful
to promulgate its doctrine in their own teaching, because it is their
duty to repress every rash opinion which should dare to raise itself
against and contradict it. It is thus that all have understood the
commandment given to them. The fidelity and unconquerable courage of
their obedience prove it. What has taken place in France? In the midst
of the universal emotion produced by the appearance of the Syllabus, the
government, abusing its power, had the sad audacity to constitute itself
judge of it. Through the instrumentality of the keeper of the seals,
minister of justice and of public worship, it forbade the publication
of the pontifical document in any pastoral instruction, alleging that
“it contained propositions contrary to the principles on which the
constitution of the empire rests.” What was the unanimous voice of the
episcopate? Eighty-four letters of bishops are in existence to bear
witness to it. All, united in the same mind, opposed to the ministerial
letter the invincible word of the apostles, _Non possumus_. All declared
that they must obey God rather then man; and two amongst them, ascending
courageously their cathedral thrones, braved the menaces of a susceptible
government by reading before the assembled people that which they had
been forbidden to print. Could they have acted all alike with this power
truly episcopal, if they had not been inspired by the conviction that
they were fulfilling a duty, and putting into practice the adage of the
Christian knights, “I do my duty, happen what may”?
We will insist no further on this point. We approach, lastly, the
question which might well supersede all the others. Let us enquire
whether the Syllabus is an infallible decision of the Vicar of Jesus
Christ.
It appears to us that, in reality, we have already settled this question.
Can a definition _ex cathedra_ be anything else than an instruction
concerning faith and morals addressed to, and imposed on, the whole
church by her visible head upon earth? How can we recognize it except
by this mark, and is not that the idea given to us of it by the Council
of the Vatican? Read over the words, so weighty and selected with so
much care by the fathers of that august assembly, and you will find that
nothing could express more accurately the exact and precise notion of it.
After that, all doubts ought to disappear. The Syllabus emanates from
him who is the master and sovereign doctor of Catholic truth. It belongs
exclusively to faith and morals by the nature of the subjects of which
it treats. It has received from the circumstances which have accompanied
its publication the manifest character of an universal law of the church.
What is wanting to it to be an irreformable decision, an act without
appeal, of the infallible authority of Peter?
We know the objection with which we shall be met. Peter may speak, it
will be urged, and not wish to exert the plenitude of his doctrinal
power. Yes; but when he restrains thus within voluntary limits the
exercise of his authority, he gives us to understand it clearly. He
is careful, in order not to overtax our weakness, to apprise us that,
notwithstanding the obligation with which he binds consciences, it is not
in his mind, as yet, to deliver a definitive sentence upon the doctrine.
Frankly, does the Syllabus offer to us an indication, however faint, of
any such reserve? What more definitive than a judgment formulated in
these terms: “This is error, that is truth”? Is any revision possible
of such a judgment? Is it possible to be revoked or abrogated? Does it
not settle us necessarily in an absolute conclusion which excludes all
possibility of diminution or of change? In a word, can the assertion
be ever permissible--“Error in these days, truth in others”? It may be
added that, by the admission of all, friends and enemies--an admission
confirmed by the declaration of the cardinal secretary of state, the
Syllabus is an appendix to, and as it were a continuation of, the bull
_Quanta cura_, to which no one can reasonably refuse the character of
a definitive and irreformable decree; and it will be understood how
unreasonable it would be to despise the evidence of facts, in order to
cling to an objection without consistency, and which falls of itself for
want of a solid foundation.
For the rest, the mind of the Holy Father is not concealed, as has been
at times suggested, under impenetrable veils. It appears the moment
we look for it; and we find it, for example, in the preparation of
the Syllabus. It should be known that the Syllabus was not the work
of a day. Pius IX. has often asserted this. He had early resolved to
strike a signal blow, and to destroy from top to bottom the monstrous
edifice of revolutionary doctrines. To this end, immediately after the
proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he transformed
the congregation of cardinals and theologians who had aided him in the
accomplishment of that work into a congregation charged with the duty of
singling out for the Apostolic See the new errors which, for a century,
had been ravaging the church of God. Ten years passed away; encyclicals
were published, allocutions pronounced; the theologians multiplied
their labors. At length, on the 8th of December, 1864, the moment of
action appearing to have arrived, Pius IX. addressed to the world that
utterance whose prolonged echoes we all have heard. The bull _Quanta
cura_ and the Syllabus were promulgated. It is obvious that an act so
long prepared, and with so much anxiety, cannot be likened to an ordinary
act. The object of the Pontiff was not simply to check the evil--it was
to uproot it. The object of such efforts could not have been to determine
nothing. Who is there, then, who will venture to assert that the whole
thought of an entire reign, and of such a reign as that of Pius IX.,
should miserably collapse in a measure without authority and without
effectiveness? To believe it would be an outrage; to affirm it would be
an insult to the wisdom and prudence of the most glorious of pontiffs.
But what need is there for searching for proofs? A single reflection
banishes every difficulty. We have in the church two means for
ascertaining whether a pontifical act is, or is not, a sovereign
definition, an infallible decision. We have to enquire of the pontiff
who is the author of it, or the people who subordinate themselves to
his teaching. Neither one nor the other can deceive us in the answer
they give. The divine promise continues equally assured in both: in the
former, when he teaches; in the latter, when they listen and obey. It is
what the theologians call active and passive infallibility. Admit that
Pius IX. had left us in ignorance; that he published the Syllabus, but
did not tell us what amount of assent he required of us. Well, none of
us are in any doubt as to that. How many times has not this people said,
how many times has it not repeated with an enthusiasm inspired by love,
that this Syllabus, despised, insulted by the enemies of the church,
they accept as the rule of their beliefs, as the very word of Peter, as
the word of life come down from heaven to save us. Is it not thus that
have spoken, one after the other, bishops, theologians, the learned and
the ignorant, the mighty and the humble? Who amongst us has not heard
this language? A celebrated doctor, Tanner, has said that in order to
distinguish amongst the teachings of the church those which belong to its
infallible authority, we must listen to the judgment of wise men, and
above all consult the universal sentiment of Christians. If we adhere to
this decision, it reveals to us our duties in regard to the sovereign act
by which Pius IX. has withdrawn the world from the shadow in which it was
losing its way, and has prepared for it a future of better destinies.
We have the more reason for acting thus as hell, by its furious hatred,
gives us, for its part, a similar warning, and proclaims, after its
fashion, the imperishable grandeur of the Syllabus. Neither has it, nor
have those who serve it, ever been under any illusion in this respect.
They have often revealed their mind both by act and word. What implacable
indignation! what torrents of insults! what clamor without truce or
mercy! And when importunate conciliators interfered to tell them they
were mistaken, that the Syllabus was nothing or next to nothing, and need
not provoke so much anger, how well they knew how to reply to them and to
bury them under the weight of their contempt! At the end of 1864, at the
moment when the struggle occasioned by the promulgation of the Encyclical
and Syllabus was the most furious, an agency of Parisian publicity, the
agency Bullier, could insert the following notice: “The Encyclical is
not a dogmatic bull, but only a doctrinal letter. It is observable that
the Syllabus does not bear the signature of the Pope. This Syllabus
has besides been published in a manner to allow us to believe that the
Holy Father did not intend to assign to it a great importance. One may
conclude, therefore, that the propositions which do not attack either the
dogma or morals of Catholics, and do not at all impeach faith, are not
condemned, but merely blamed.” To these words, poor in sense, but crafty
and treacherous in expression, the journal _Le Siècle_ replied as follows:
“There are now people who tell us that the Encyclical is not a dogmatic
bull, but a doctrinal letter; that the eighty propositions are not
condemned, because they do not figure in the Encyclical, but only in the
Syllabus; that this Syllabus does not bear the signature of the Pope;
that it has been composed only by a commission of theologians, etc. These
people would do better to be silent. Encyclical or Syllabus, the fact is
that the theocracy has just hurled as haughty a defiance against modern
ideas as it was possible for it to do. We shall soon see what will be the
result.”
We will leave them to settle their quarrels between themselves. For
ourselves, listening to these voices of heaven and of hell, of the church
and of the world, which coincide in exalting the work eternally blessed
by Pius IX., we repeat with profounder conviction than ever: “Yes, the
Syllabus is the infallible word of Peter; and if our modern society is
within the reach of cure, it is by the Syllabus that it is to be saved!”
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._
FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
I.
In a sumptuous apartment, whose magnificent furniture and costly
adornings announced it as the abode of kings, in a large Gothic
arm-chair--whose massive sides were decorated with carvings in ebony and
ivory of exquisite delicacy, and which was in itself, altogether, a model
of the most skilful workmanship--there reclined the form of a stately and
elegant woman.
Her small feet, but half-concealed beneath the heavy folds of a rich
blue velvet robe, rested on a footstool covered with crimson brocade,
embroidered with golden stars. Bands of pearls adorned her beautiful
neck, contrasted with its dazzling whiteness, and were profusely twined
amid the raven tresses of her luxuriant hair. An expression of profound
melancholy was imprinted upon her noble features; her eyes were cast
down, and the long, drooping lashes were heavy with tears which she
seemed vainly endeavoring to repress, as she sat absorbed in thought, and
nervously entwining her snowy fingers with the silk and jewelled cord
which, according to the fashion of that day, she wore fastened at her
girdle and hanging to her feet. This royal personage was Catherine of
Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, wife of Henry VIII.,
and queen of England.
The king himself was hurriedly pacing to and fro in the apartment, with
contracted brow, a deeply troubled expression gleaming from his dark eyes
and obscuring, with a shade of gloomy fierceness, the naturally fine
features of his face. The ordinary grace of his carriage had disappeared;
his step was hurried and irregular; and every movement denoted a man
laboring under some violent excitement. From time to time he approached
the window, and gazed abstractedly into the distance; then, returning
to Catherine, he would address her abruptly, with a sharp expression or
hurried interrogation, neither waiting for nor seeming to desire a reply.
While this strange scene was being enacted within the palace at
Greenwich, one of an entirely different nature was occurring in the
courtyard. From the road leading from Greenwich a cavalcade approached,
headed by a personage invested with the Roman purple, and apparently
entitled to and surrounded by all the “pomp and circumstance” of royalty.
He was mounted on a richly caparisoned mule with silver-plated harness,
adorned with silver bells and tufted with knots of crimson silk. This
distinguished personage was no other than the Archbishop of York, the
potent minister, who united in his person all the dignities both of
church and state--the Cardinal Legate, the king’s acknowledged favorite,
Wolsey. To increase his already princely possessions, to extend his
influence and authority, had been this man’s constant endeavor, and the
sole aim of his life. And so complete had been his success that he was
now regarded by all as an object of admiration and envy. But how greatly
mistaken was the world in its opinion!
In his heart, Wolsey suffered the constant agony of a profound
humiliation. Compelled to yield in all things, and bow with servile
submission to the haughty will of his exacting and imperious master--who
by a word, and in a moment, could deprive him of his dignities and
temporalities--he lived in a state of constant dread, fearing to lose the
patronage and favor to secure which he had sacrificed both his honor and
his conscience.
He was accompanied on this journey by a numerous retinue, composed
of gentlemen attached to his household and young pages carrying his
standard, all of whom were eagerly pressing upon him the most obsequious
attentions. They assisted him to dismount, and as he approached the
palace the guards saluted and received him with the utmost military
deference and respect; and with an air of grave dignity Wolsey passed on,
and disappeared beneath the arch of the grand stairway.
Let us again return to the royal apartments. The king, seeing Wolsey
arrive, immediately turned from the window and, confronting Catherine,
abruptly exclaimed:
“Come, madam, I wish you to retire; the affairs of my kingdom demand
instantly all my time and attention.” And hastily turning to the window,
he looked eagerly into the courtyard.
Catherine arose without uttering a word, and approaching the centre of
the apartment she took from the table a small silver bell, and rang it
twice.
On this table was a magnificent cloth cover that she had embroidered
with her own hands. The design represented a tournament, in which Henry,
who was devoted to chivalrous amusements, had borne off the prize over
all his competitors. In those days her husband received such presents
with grateful affection and sincere appreciation, and, as the souvenir
recalled to her mind the joy and happiness of the past, tears of
bitterness flowed afresh from the eyes of the unhappy princess.
In answer to her signal, the door soon opened, the queen’s ladies in
waiting appeared, and, arranging themselves on either side, stood in
readiness to follow their royal mistress. She passed out, and was slowly
walking in silence through the vast gallery leading to the king’s
apartments, when Wolsey appeared, advancing from the opposite end of the
gallery, followed by his brilliant retinue.
Catherine, then, instantly understood why the king had so abruptly
commanded her to retire. Suddenly pausing, she stood transfixed and
immovable, her soul overwhelmed with anguish; but, with a countenance
calm and impassible, she awaited the approach of the cardinal, who
advanced to salute her. In spite of all her efforts, however, she could
no longer control her feelings.
“My lord cardinal,” she exclaimed in a low voice, trembling with emotion,
“go, the king waits for you!” And as she uttered these words, the
unhappy woman fell senseless to the floor.
The hardened soul of the ambitious Wolsey was moved to its very depths
with compassion as he silently gazed on the noble woman before him, who
possessed the unbounded love and grateful esteem of all her household,
not only as their sovereign, but also as their beneficent mother.
The cloud of ambition that forever surrounded him, darkening his soul and
obscuring his perceptions, was for the moment illuminated, and for the
first time he realized the enormity of Henry’s proceedings against the
queen.
As this sudden light flashed on him, he felt remorse for having
encouraged the divorce, and resolved that henceforward all his influence
should be used to dissuade his sovereign from it.
At the approach of the royal favorite the ushers hastily made their
salutations (although the queen had been permitted to pass them with
scarcely the slightest mark of respect), and seemed to consider the
most humble and servile attitude they could assume before him as only
sufficiently respectful. They hastened to throw open the doors before
him as he advanced, and Wolsey soon found himself in the presence of the
king, who awaited his arrival in a state of almost angry impatience.
“Well! what do you come to tell me?” he cried. “Do you bring me good
news?”
Wolsey, whose opinions had so recently undergone a very great change,
for a moment hesitated. “Sire,” he at length replied, “Campeggio, the
cardinal legate, has arrived.”
“Has he indeed?” said Henry, with an ironical smile. “After so many
unsuccessful applications, we have then, at last, obtained this favor.
Well, I hope now this affair will proceed more rapidly; and, Wolsey,
remember that it is your business so entirely to compromise and surround
this man, that he shall not be able even to _think_ without my consent
and sanction. And, above all, beware of the intrigues of the queen.
Catherine is a Spaniard, with an artful, unyielding nature and fierce,
indomitable will. She will, without doubt, make the most determined and
desperate effort to enlist the legate in favor of her cause.”
“Is the decision of your majesty irrevocable on the subject of this
divorce?” replied Wolsey, in a hesitating and embarrassed manner. “The
farther we advance, the more formidable the accumulating difficulties
become. I must acknowledge, sire, I begin myself to doubt of success.
Campeggio has already declared that, if the queen appeals to Rome, he
will not refuse to present her petition, and defend her cause; that
he himself will decide nothing, and will yield to nothing he cannot
conscientiously approve.”
On hearing Wolsey express these sentiments, Henry’s face flushed with
rage, and a menacing scowl contracted his brow.
“Can it be possible,” he cried, “that you dare address me in this manner?
I will castigate the Pope himself if he refuses his sanction. He shall
measure his power with mine! He trembles because Charles V. is already on
his frontier. I will make him tremble now, in my turn! I will marry Anne
Boleyn--yes, I will marry her before the eyes of the whole world!”
“What do you say, sire? Anne Boleyn!” cried Wolsey.
“Yes, Anne Boleyn!” replied the king, regarding Wolsey with his usual
haughty and contemptuous expression. “You know her well. She is attached
to the service of Catherine.”
“Lady Anne Boleyn!” again cried Wolsey after a moment’s silence, for
astonishment had almost for the time rendered him speechless and
breathless. “Lady Anne Boleyn! The King of England, the great Henry,
wishes, then, to marry Anne Boleyn! Why, if contemplating such a marriage
as that, did you send me to seek the alliance of France, and to offer the
hand of your daughter in marriage to the Duke of Orleans? And why did
you instruct me to declare to Francis I. that your desire was to place
on the throne of England a princess of his blood? It was only by these
representations and promises that I succeeded in inducing him to sign the
treaty which deprived Catherine of all assistance. You have assured me of
your entire approval of these negotiations. This alliance with France was
the only means by which to secure for yourself any real defence against
the Pope and the Emperor. Do you suppose that Charles V. will quietly
permit you to deprive his aunt of her position and title as queen of
England?” Here Wolsey paused, wholly transported with indignation.
“Charles!” replied the king, “Charles? I can easily manage and pacify him
by fine promises and long negotiations. As to our Holy Father, I will
stir up strife enough to fill his hands so full that he will not be able
to attend to anything else. The quarrels of Austria and France always
end by recoiling on his head, and I imagine he will not soon forget the
sacking Rome and his former imprisonment.”
“Yes, but you forget,” said Wolsey, “that the King of France will
accuse you of flagrant bad faith: and will you bring on yourself their
abhorrence in order to espouse Anne Boleyn?”
The minister pronounced these last words with an expression and in a
tone of such contemptuous scorn as to arouse in a fearful degree the
indignation of the king, accustomed only to the flattery and servile
adulation of his courtiers. At the same time, he was compelled to feel
the force of the cardinal’s reasoning, although the truth only served
still more to irritate and enrage him.
“Cease, Wolsey!” cried Henry, fixing his flashing eyes fiercely upon him;
“I am not here to listen to your complaints. I shall marry whom I please;
and your head shall answer for the fidelity with which you assist me in
executing my will.”
“My head, sire,” replied Wolsey courageously, “has long belonged to you;
my entire life has been devoted to your service; and yet I shall most
probably, in the end, have bitter cause to repent having always made
myself subservient to your wishes. But your majesty will surely reflect
more seriously on the dishonor you will necessarily incur by such a
choice as this. The queen’s party will grow stronger and stronger, and I
tell you frankly, I fear lest the legate be inflexible.”
“Wolsey,” cried Henry, elevating his voice in a threatening manner, “I
have already declared my intentions--is that not sufficient? As to the
legate, I repeat, he must be gained over to my cause. Gold and flattery
will soon secure to us that tender conscience whose scruples you now so
sorely apprehend. Bring him to me to-morrow.”
“He is suffering too much, sire. The cardinal is aged and very infirm; I
have no idea he will be in a condition to see your majesty for several
days yet.”
“Too long, entirely too long to wait!” replied the king. “I must see him
this very day; he shall be compelled to make his appearance. I wish you
to be present also, as we shall discuss affairs of importance, and then I
shall depart.”
With these words Henry withdrew and went to look for a casket, of which
he alone carried the key, and in which he usually kept his most valuable
and important papers.
During his absence, Wolsey remained leaning on the table, before which
he was seated, absorbed in deep and painful reflections. He feared Henry
too much to oppose him long in any of his designs; besides, he saw no
possible means to induce him to change his resolution. He had felt, as
we have seen, a momentary compassion for the misfortunes of the queen,
but that impression had been speedily effaced by considerations of far
greater moment to himself.
As a shrewd diplomatist, he regretted the alliance with France; besides,
he was really too much interested in the welfare of the king not to
deplore his determination to contract such a marriage.
But the cause of his deepest anxiety was the knowledge he possessed of
Anne’s great dislike for him, and the consciousness that her family
and counsellors were his rivals and enemies; in consequence of which
he clearly foresaw they would induce her to use all the influence she
possessed with the king in order to deprive him of Henry’s favor
and patronage. He was suffering this mental conflict when the king
reappeared, bearing a bronze casket carved with rare perfection. Placing
it on the table, he unlocked it. Among a great many papers which it
contained was a very handsome book, the printing beautifully executed,
and every page ornamented with arabesques exquisitely tinted and shaded.
The cover, formed of two metal plates, represented in bass-relief the
figures of Faith, Hope, and Charity as young virgins, bearing in their
hands and on their foreheads the allegorical emblems of those sublime
Christian virtues. Emeralds of immense value, surrounded by heavy gold
settings, adorned the massive gold clasps, and also served to hold them
firmly in their places.
On the back of this book, deeply engraven in the metal, were the
following words: _The Seven Sacraments_. Henry had written this work
in defence of the ancient dogmas of the Catholic Church, when first
attacked by the violent doctrines of a monk named Luther. Whether the
king had really composed it himself, or whether he had caused it to be
secretly done by another, and wished to enjoy the reputation of being
the author, he certainly attached great importance to the work. Not only
had he distributed it throughout his own kingdom, but had sent it to the
Pope and to all the German princes, through the Dean of Windsor, whom he
instructed to say that he was ready to defend the faith, not only with
his pen but, if need be, with his sword also. It was at that time that he
asked and obtained from the court of Rome the title of “Defender of the
Faith.”
Now he was constantly busy with a manuscript, which he took from the
mysterious casket, containing a Treatise on Divorce, and to which he
every day devoted several hours. Greatly pleased with a number of
arguments he had just found, he came to communicate them to Wolsey. The
latter, after urging several objections, at length reminded him of the
fraudulent and persistent means that had been employed to extract from
the University of Oxford an opinion favorable to divorce. “And yet,”
added the cardinal, “it has been found impossible to prevent them from
increasing the number of most important restrictions, and thus rendering
your case exceedingly difficult, if not entirely hopeless.”
“What!” said the king, “after the good example of the University of
Cambridge, are we still to encounter scruples? Consider it well,
cardinal, in order not to forget the recompense, and, above all, the
punishment, for that is the true secret of success! You will also take
care to write to the Elector Frederick, and say that I wait to receive
the humble apologies of that man Luther, whom he has taken so entirely
under his protection.”
“Sire,” replied the cardinal, “I have received frequent intelligence with
regard to that matter which I have scarcely dared communicate to you.”
“And why not?” demanded the king. “Do you presume, my lord cardinal, that
the abuse of an obscure and turbulent monk can affect me? And besides, to
tell you the truth, I do not know but this man may, after all, be useful
to me. He has attracted the attention of the court of Rome, and may yet
have to crave my protection.”
“Well, sire, since you compel me to speak, I will tell you that, far
from making humble apologies, his violence against you has redoubled. I
have just received a tract he has recently published. In it I find many
passages where, in speaking of you, he employs the most abusive epithets
and expressions. For instance, he repeatedly declares that your majesty
‘is a fool, an ass, and a madman,’ that you are ‘coarser than a hog,
and more stupid than a jackass.’ He speaks with equal scurrility of our
Holy Father the Pope, addressing him, in terms of the most unparalleled
effrontery, this pretended warning, which is of course intended simply
as an insult: ‘My petit Paul, my petit Pope, my young ass, walk
carefully--it is very slippery--you may fall and break your legs. You
will surely hurt yourself, and then people will say, “What the devil does
this mean? The petit Pope has hurt himself.”’ Further on, I find this
ridiculous comparison, which could only emanate from a vile and shameless
pen: ‘The ass knows that he is an ass, the stone knows that it is a
stone, but these asses of popes are unable to recognize themselves as
asses.’ He concludes at length with these words, which fill the measure
of his impiety and degradation: ‘If I were ruler of an empire, I would
make a bundle of the Pope and his cardinals, and throw them altogether
into that little pond, the Tuscan Sea. I pledge my word that such a bath
would restore their health, and I pledge Jesus Christ as my security!’”
“What fearful blasphemy!” cried Henry. “Could a Christian possibly be
supposed to utter such absurd, blasphemous vulgarities? I trow not! This
pretended ‘reformer’ of the ‘discipline and abuses of the church’ seems
to possess any other than an evangelical character. No one can doubt his
divine mission and his Christian charity! A man who employs arguments
like these is too vile and too contemptible to be again mentioned in my
presence. Let me hear no more of this intolerable apostate! Proceed now
with business.”
“Sire,” then continued the cardinal, presenting a list to the king,
“here are the names of several candidates I wish you to consider for
the purpose of appointing a treasurer of the exchequer. Thomas More has
already filled, most honorably, a number of offices of public trust, and
is also a man of equal ability and integrity. I recommend him to your
majesty for this office.”
“I approve your selection most unhesitatingly,” replied the king. “I am
extremely fond of More, and perfectly satisfied with the manner in which
he has performed his official duties heretofore. You will so inform him
from me. What next?”
“I would also petition your majesty that Cromwell be confirmed as
intendant-general of the monasteries latterly transformed into colleges.”
“Who is this Cromwell?” inquired Henry. “I have no recollection of him.”
“Sire,” replied Wolsey, “he is of obscure birth, the son of a fuller of
this city. He served in the Italian wars in his youth; afterwards he
applied himself to the study of law. His energies and abilities are such
as to entitle him to the favorable consideration of your majesty.”
“Let him be confirmed as you desire,” replied the king very graciously,
as he proceeded to sign the different commissions intended for the newly
appointed officials.
“I wish,” he added, regarding Wolsey with a keen, searching glance, “that
you would find some position for a young ecclesiastic called Cranmer, who
has been strongly recommended to me for office.”
The brow of the cardinal contracted into a heavy frown as he heard the
name of a man but too well known to him. He immediately divined that it
was from Anne Boleyn alone the king had received this recommendation.
* * * * *
In the meantime, the queen had been carried to her apartments. The
devoted efforts of the ladies of her household, who surrounded her with
the tenderest ministrations, soon recalled her to the consciousness and
full realization of her misery.
Now the night has come, and found Catherine still seated before the
grate, absorbed in deep thought. Born under the soft skies of Spain,
she had never become acclimated, nor accustomed to the humid, foggy
atmosphere of England. Like a delicate plant torn from its native soil,
she sighed unceasingly for the balmy air and the golden sunlight of
her own genial southern clime. Such regrets, added to the sorrows she
had experienced, had thrown her into a state of habitual melancholy,
from which nothing could arouse her, and which the slightest occurrence
sufficed to augment. For a long time her firmness of character had
sustained her; but her health beginning to fail, and no longer able
to arouse the energy and courage which had before raised her above
misfortune, she sank beneath the burden and abandoned herself to hopeless
sorrow.
As she sat all alone in her chamber, she held in her hand a letter but
recently received from her native country. Reading it slowly, she mused,
dreaming of the days of her happy childhood, when suddenly the door was
opened, and a young girl, apparently ten or twelve years of age, ran
in and threw her arms around the neck of the queen. The figure of the
child was slight and graceful; around her waist was tied a broad sash
of rose-colored ribbon, with long ends floating over her white muslin
dress; her beautiful blonde hair was drawn back from her forehead and
fastened with bows of ribbon, leaving exposed a lovely little face
glowing with animation and spirit, and a frank, ingenuous expression,
at once prepossessing and charming. This was the Princess Mary, the
daughter of Henry, the future consort of a Spanish prince, to whom the
shrewd diplomatist Wolsey had promised her hand, in order to deprive the
unfortunate mother of this her only remaining consolation.
“Why is it, my dearest mamma,” she exclaimed, “that you are again in
tears?” And, laughingly, she took the handkerchief from the queen and put
it to her own eyes, pretending to weep.
“See now, this is the way I shall do when I am grown up, for it seems to
me grown-up people are always weeping. Oh! I wish I could always remain
a child, and then I should never be miserable! Listen, my dear mamma,”
she continued, again twining her arms around her mother’s neck, “why is
it that you are always weeping and so sad? It must surely do you harm.
Everybody is not like you, constantly sighing and in tears, I do assure
you. Only this morning, I was at St. James’ Park with Alice, and there
I met Lady Anne Boleyn; she was laughing gaily as she promenaded with a
number of her friends. I ran immediately to her to say good morning, for
I was really very glad to see her. How is it, mamma--I thought you told
me she had gone to Kent to visit her father?”
“My child,” replied the queen, her tears flowing afresh, “what I told you
was true; but she has since returned without my being informed.”
“But, mamma, since this is your own house, why has she not yet presented
herself? I am very sorry she has acted so, for I love her better than any
of the other ladies. She told me all she saw in France when she travelled
with my aunt, the Duchess of Suffolk. Oh! how I would love to see France.
Lady Anne says it is a most beautiful country. She has described to me
all the magnificent entertainments that King Louis XII. gave in honor of
my aunt. Mamma, when I marry, I want the King of France to be my husband.”
“And you--you also love Anne Boleyn?” replied the queen.
“Oh! yes, mamma, _very_ much, very much indeed!” innocently answered the
child. “I am very sorry she is no longer to be here, she is so amiable,
and when she plays with me she always amuses me so much!”
“Well, my dear child,” replied the queen, “I will tell you now why people
weep when they are grown up, as you say: it is because they very often
love persons who no longer return their affection.”
“And do you believe she no longer loves me?” replied the impulsive little
Mary with a thoughtful expression. “And yet, mamma, I kissed her this
morning and embraced her with all my heart. However, I now remember that
she scarcely spoke a word to me; but I had not thought of it before. She
seemed to be very much embarrassed. But why should she no longer love me
when I still love her so dearly?”
As Mary uttered these words, a woman entered the room and, whispering a
moment in the ear of the queen, placed a note in her hand.
Catherine arose and approached the light; after reading the note, she
called the young princess and requested her to retire to her chamber, as
she had something to write immediately that was very important.
Mary ran gaily to her mother, and, after kissing and embracing her fondly
and tenderly again and again, she at last bade her good-night, and with a
smiling face bounded from the room in the same light and buoyant manner
that she had entered it.
“Leonora,” said the queen, “my dear child, you have left for my sake our
beautiful Spain, and have ever served me with faithful devotion. Listen,
now, to the request I shall make--go bring me immediately the dress and
outer apparel belonging to one of the servant women.”
“Why so, my lady?”
“Ask no questions--I have use for them; you will accompany me; I must go
to London this night.”
“Good heaven! my dear mistress, what are you saying?” cried Leonora in
great alarm. “Go to London to-night? It is five miles; you will never be
able to walk it, and you well know it would be impossible to attempt the
journey in any other way--they would detect us.”
“Leonora,” answered the queen, “I am resolved to go. Faithful friends
inform me that the legate has arrived. Henry will now redouble his
vigilance. I have but one day--if I lose this opportunity, I shall
never succeed. My last remaining hope rests upon this. If you refuse to
accompany me, I shall go alone.”
“Alone!--oh! my beloved mistress,” cried Leonora, her hands clasped and
her eyes streaming tears, “you can never do this! Think of what you are
going to undertake! If you were recognized, the king would be at once
informed, and we would both be lost.”
“Even so, Leonora; but what have I to lose? Is it possible for me to be
made more wretched? Shall I abandon this, my last hope? No, no, Leonora;
I am accountable to my children for the honor of their birth. Go now, my
good girl! fly--there is not a moment to lose. Fear nothing; God will
protect us!”
Leonora, shrewd and adroit like the women of her country, was very soon
in possession of the desired habiliments. Her actions might have excited
suspicion, perhaps; but entirely devoted to the queen as she was she felt
no fear, and would, without hesitation, have exposed herself to even
greater danger, had it been necessary, in the execution of her mistress’
wishes.
Catherine feigned to retire; and, after her attendants had been
dismissed, she left the palace, closely enveloped in a long brown cloak,
such as was habitually worn by the working-women of that period. The
faithful Leonora tremblingly followed the footsteps of her mistress. They
breathed more freely when they found themselves at last beyond the limits
of the castle. Leonora, however, when they entered the road leading to
London, anxiously reflected on the danger of meeting some one who would
probably recognize them. Her excited imagination even began to conjure up
vague apprehensions of the dead, to blend with her fears of the living.
She also dreaded lest the strength of the queen should prove unequal
to the journey--in fine, she feared everything. The sighing winds, the
rustling leaves, the sound of her own footsteps as she walked over the
stones, startled and filled her with apprehension. Very soon there was
another cause for alarm. The wind suddenly arose with violence; dark
clouds overspread the heavens; the moon disappeared; large drops of
rain began to fall, and soon poured in torrents, deluging the earth and
drenching their garments.
In vain they increased their speed; the storm raged with such fury they
were compelled to take refuge under a tree by the roadside.
“My poor Leonora,” said the queen, supporting herself against the trunk
of the tree, whose wide-spread branches were being lashed and bent by the
fury of the storm, “I regret now having brought you with me. I am already
sufficiently miserable without the additional pain of seeing my burdens
laid upon others.”
“My beloved lady and mistress,” cried Leonora, “I am not half so unhappy
at this moment as I was when I feared my brothers would prevent me from
following you to England. It seems to me I can see the vessel now,
with its white sails unfurled, bearing you away, whilst I, standing on
the shore, with frantic cries, entreated them to let me rejoin you.
That night, I remember, being unable to sleep, I went down into the
orange-grove, the perfume of whose fruits and flowers embalmed the air
of the palace gardens. Wiping away the sad tears, I fixed my eyes upon
your windows, which the light of our beautiful skies rendered distinctly
visible even at night. In Spain, at that hour, we can walk by the light
of the stars; but in this land of mud and water, this horrid England,
one has to be wrapped to the ears in furs all the year round, or shiver
with cold from morning till night. This is doubtless the reason why
the English are so dull and so tiresome to others. In what a condition
is this light mantle that covers our heads!” said Leonora, shaking the
coarse woollen cloak dripping with water, that enveloped Catherine.
“These Englishwomen,” she resumed, “know no more about the sound of a
guitar than they do about the rays of the sun; they are all just as
melancholy as moles. There is not one of them, except the Princess Mary,
who seems to have the slightest idea of our beautiful Spain.”
“Ah!” sighed the queen, “she is just as I was at her age. God forbid that
her future should resemble that of her mother!”
In the meantime the storm had gradually abated; time pressed, and
Catherine again resumed her journey with renewed courage and accelerated
speed. In spite of the mud, in which she sank at every step, she
redoubled her efforts. For what cannot the strong human will accomplish,
when opposed to feeble, physical strength alone, or even when the
obstacles interposed proceed from the elements themselves? She at length
arrived at the gate of the palace of Lambeth, situated on the banks of
the Thames, where the cardinal Campeggio, according to the intelligence
conveyed to her, would hold his court.
The courtyards, the doors, the ante-chambers, were thronged with servants
and attendants, eager and active in the performance of their duties, for
Henry had ordered that the cardinal should be entertained in a style
of princely munificence, and entirely free from personal expense. All
these valets, being strangers to their new masters, and unaccustomed to
their new employments, permitted the queen to pass without question or
detention, not, however, without a stare of stupid curiosity at her muddy
boots and draggled garments.
Catherine, being perfectly familiar with the interior of the palace, had
no difficulty in finding the legate’s cabinet.
The venerable prelate was slightly lame, and in a feeble and precarious
state of health. She found him seated before the fire in a large velvet
arm-chair, engaged in reading his Breviary. His face was pale and
emaciated; a few thin locks of snow-white hair hung about his temples.
Hearing the door open, he rested the book on his knee, casting upon the
queen, as she entered, a keen, penetrating glance.
Without hesitation, Catherine advanced towards him. “My lord cardinal,”
she exclaimed, removing the hood from her face, “you see before you the
queen of England, the legitimate spouse of Henry VIII.”
Hearing these words, Campeggio was unable to suppress an exclamation of
surprise. He arose at once to his feet, and, perceiving the extraordinary
costume in which Catherine was arrayed, he cast upon her a look of
incredulous astonishment. He was about to speak when she, with great
vehemence, interrupted him.
“Yes,” she cried, raising her hands towards heaven, “I call upon God to
witness the truth of what I say--I am Queen Catherine! You are astonished
to see me here at this hour, and in this disguise. Know, then, that I am
a prisoner in my own palace; my cruel husband would have prevented me
from coming to you. They tell me you are sent to sit in judgment on my
case. Surely, then, you should be made acquainted with my bitter woes and
grievances. Lend not your aid to the cause of injustice and wrong, but be
the strength of the weak, the defence of the innocent. A stranger in this
country, I have no friends; fear of the king drives them all from me.
I cannot doubt it--no, you will not refuse to hear my appeal. You will
defend the cause of an injured mother and her helpless children. What!
would you be willing to condemn me without first hearing my cause--I,
the daughter of kings? Have I been induced to marry Henry of Lancaster
to enjoy the honors of royalty, when all such honors belong to me by my
birthright? Catherine of Aragon has never been unfaithful to her husband;
but to-day, misled by a criminal passion, he wishes to place upon the
throne of England a shameless woman, to deny his own blood, and brand his
own children with the stigma of illegitimacy! Yes, I solemnly declare to
you that nothing can shake my resolution or divert me from my purpose!
Strong in my innocence and in the justice of my cause, I will appeal to
the whole world--aye, even to God himself!”
The cardinal stood motionless, regarding Catherine with reverence, as an
expression of haughty indignation lighted up her noble features. He was
struck with admiration at her courage and filled with compassion for her
woes.
“No, madam,” he replied, “I am not to be your judge. I know that it is
but too true that you are surrounded by enemies. But let me assure you
that in me, at least, you will not find another. I shall esteem myself
most happy if, by my counsel or influence, I may be of service to your
cause, and it is from the depths of my heart that I beg you to rely upon
this assurance.”
Catherine would have thanked him, but a noise was that moment heard of
the ushers throwing the doors violently open and announcing, in a loud
voice, “His Eminence Cardinal Wolsey!”
“Merciful heaven!” cried Catherine, “must this odious man pursue me for
ever?” She hurriedly lowered her veil, and took her place at the left of
the door, and the moment he entered passed out behind him. Wolsey glanced
at her sharply, the appearance of a woman arousing instantly a suspicion
in his mind, but, being compelled to respond with politeness to the
legate’s salutations, he had no time to scrutinize, and Catherine escaped
without being recognized.
Wolsey was passionately fond of pomp and pageant. The principal positions
in his house were filled by barons and chevaliers. Among these attendants
were numbered the sons of some of the most distinguished families, who,
under his protection and by the aid of his all-powerful patronage and
influence, aspired to civil or military preferment.
On this occasion, he considered it necessary to make an unusual display
of luxurious magnificence. It was with great difficulty and trepidation
that the queen threaded her way through the crowd of prelates, noblemen,
and young gentlemen who awaited in the ante-chambers the honor of being
presented by the king’s favorite to the cardinal-legate.
The courtyard was filled with their brilliant equipages, conspicuous
among which were observed a great number of mules, richly caparisoned,
and carrying on their backs immense chests, covered with crimson cloth,
trimmed with fringe and embroidered with gold.
A crowd of idle valets were engaged in conversation at the foot of the
stairs. The queen, in passing them, attracted their attention, exciting
their ridicule and coarse gibes, and she heard them also indulge in the
most insolent conjectures regarding her.
“Who is that woman?” said one. “See how dirty she is.” “She looks like
a beggar, indeed,” cried another, addressing himself to one of the
new-comers engaged to attend the legate. “Your master receives strange
visitors; we, on the contrary, have nothing to do with people like that,
except quickly to show them the door.”
“Ha! ha! you will have your hands full,” exclaimed the most insolent
of the crowd, “if your master gives audience to such rabble as that.”
Emboldened by these remarks, one of the porters approached the queen,
and, rudely pushing her, exclaimed with an oath: “Well, beldame, what
brought you here? Take yourself off quickly. My lord is rich, but his
crowns were not made for such as you.” These words excited the loudest
applause from the whole crowd, who clapped their hands and cheered
vociferously. Catherine trembled with mortification.
“It is thus,” she mentally exclaimed, “that the poor are received in
the palaces of the rich. And I myself have probably more than once,
without knowing it, permitted them to sigh in vain at the gates of my own
palace--mothers weeping for their children, or men, old and helpless,
making a last appeal for assistance.”
The queen, entirely absorbed in these reflections, together with the
impression made upon her by the appearance of the venerable legate, the
sudden apparition of Wolsey, the snares that had been laid for her, and
the temptations with which they had surrounded her, mechanically followed
Leonora, to whom the fear that her mistress might be pursued and arrested
seemed to have given wings.
“Leonora,” at length cried the queen, “I feel that I can go no farther.
Stop, and let us rest for a moment; you walk too quickly.” Exhausted with
fatigue, she seated herself on a rock by the roadside.
She had scarcely rested a moment when a magnificent carriage passed.
The silken curtains were drawn back, and the flaming torches, carried
by couriers, who surrounded the carriage, completely illuminated the
interior. Seated in this princely equipage was a young girl, brilliant
in her youthful beauty and the splendor of her elegant dress and
jewelled adornings. At a glance, Catherine recognized Anne Boleyn, who
was returning from a grand entertainment given her by the Lord Mayor of
London.
She passed like the light; the carriage rapidly whirling through the mud
and water, that flew from the wheels and covered anew the already soiled
garments of the hapless queen.
Catherine, completely overcome by painful emotions, felt as though she
were dying.
“Leonora, listen!” she said in a faint voice, scarcely audible--“Leonora,
come near me--give me your hand; I feel that I am dying! You will carry
to my daughter my last benediction!”
She sought in the darkness the hand of Leonora; the film of death
seemed gathering over her eyes; she did not speak, her head sank on her
shoulder, and poor Leonora thought the queen had ceased to breathe. She
at first held her in her arms; but at length, overcome by fatigue, she
sank upon the earth as she vainly endeavored to revive her by breathing
into her mouth her own life-breath. But seeing all her efforts to restore
animation useless, she came to the terrible conclusion that Catherine was
indeed dead.
“My dear mistress,” she cried wildly, wringing her hands, “my good
mistress is dead! What will become of me? It is my fault: I should
have prevented her from going. Ah! how miserable I am!” And her tears
and cries redoubled. At length she heard in the distance the sound of
approaching footsteps, and was soon able to distinguish a litter, borne
by a number of men. “Help!” she cried, her hopes reviving at the sight,
and very soon they were near her--“help! come to my assistance; my
mistress is dying!” Seeing two women, one lying on the ground supported
in the arms of another, who appeared half-deranged, the person who
occupied the litter commanded the men to stop immediately, and he quickly
alighted. It was the king! He also was going to London to see the
legate; to prevent his anxious haste from being known, and commented on,
he had adopted this secret conveyance. When she saw him, Leonora was
paralyzed with apprehension and alarm. The king instantly recognized
the queen and the unhappy Leonora. In a furious voice, he demanded what
she was doing there and where she had been. But in vain she endeavored
to reply--her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth--she was unable to
articulate a word. Transported with rage at her silence, and by what
he suspected, he immediately had the queen placed in the litter, and
ordering the men to walk slowly, he followed them on foot to the palace.
Catherine was carried to her own apartment, and soon restored to
consciousness; but on opening her eyes she looked around, vainly hoping
to behold her faithful Leonora. She never saw her again! She had been
taken away, and the punishment that was meted out to her, or the fate
that befel the unfortunate girl, was for ever involved in mystery.
While discord filled the royal palace with perplexity and sorrow a
statesman, simple and peaceful, awaited, with happiness mingled with
impatience, the arrival of a friend. In his house, all around him seemed
possessed of redoubled activity. The family table was more elegantly
spread, fresh flowers decorated all the apartments, the children ran to
and fro in the very excess of their joy and delight, until at length,
in every direction, the glad announcement was heard, “He has come! he
has come!” The entire family eagerly descended to the court-yard to meet
and welcome the visitor, and Sir Thomas, with feelings of inexpressible
joy, folded in his embrace the Bishop of Rochester, the wise and virtuous
Fisher, whom he loved with the purest and tenderest sentiments of
friendship.
“At last you are here,” he exclaimed; “how happy I am to see you once
more!”
While the good bishop was ascending the stairs, surrounded by a troop
of Sir Thomas’ youngest children, Margaret, the eldest daughter, came
forward and saluted him, accompanied by Lady More, her step-mother,
and young William Roper, her affianced husband. They all entered the
drawing-room together, and, after engaging a short time in general
conversation, Sir Thomas bade the children retire, that he might converse
with more freedom.
“My dear friend,” he exclaimed, taking the bishop’s hand again in his
own, “I cannot express the joy I feel at your return. I have been so long
deprived of your presence, and I have so many things to say to you. But
my heart is too full at this moment to permit me to express all I feel or
would say! But why have you not answered my letters?”
“Your letters!” replied the bishop. “Why, it has been more than a month
since I received one from you.”
“How can that be possible unless they have been intercepted?” replied
More. “The king every day becomes more and more suspicious. If this
continues, it will soon be considered high treason for a man to think.”
“I cannot tell what has become of your letters. I only know I have
not received them, and it has caused me a great deal of anxiety and
apprehension. But my friend, since I find you full of life and health,
I am quite satisfied and happy. Now, let me hear all that has happened
at court; but let me begin by first telling you that the king has sent
me, through Cardinal Wolsey, a document he has written on the subject
of divorce, asking my opinion and advice. I have answered him with all
frankness and candor, expressing myself strongly against his views.
Certainly, there is nothing more absurd than the idea of the king’s
wishing to repudiate, after so many years of marriage, a princess so
virtuous and irreproachable, to whom he can find no other objection
than that she was betrothed to his brother, Prince Arthur. Besides, a
dispensation was obtained on that account at the time of his marriage,
therefore it would seem his conscience ought to be perfectly satisfied.”
“Yes, yes, his conscience should be entirely at rest,” replied Sir
Thomas. “And if he sincerely believes the marriage has been void
until this time, why does he not make the effort to have it rendered
legitimate, instead of endeavoring to annul it entirely? It is because he
wishes to marry one of the queen’s ladies--the young Anne Boleyn!”
“Oh! horrible,” cried Fisher. “Are you sure, my friend, of what you say?
Gracious heaven! If I had only suspected it! But I assure you I have
had entire confidence in him. I have, therefore, examined the subject
conscientiously and with the greatest possible diligence before giving
him my reply. Had I suspected any such scheme as this, I should never
have had the patience to consider the arguments he has presented with so
much duplicity.”
“Well, my dear Fisher,” replied Sir Thomas, “such is the sad truth, and
such are the ‘scruples’ that disturb the tender conscience of the king.
To repudiate the queen and the Princess Mary, his daughter, is his sole
aim, his only desire. I also have received an order to read and give my
opinion on the divorce question; but I have asked to be excused, on the
ground of my very limited knowledge of theological matters. Moreover, all
these debates and hypocritical petitions for advice are entirely absurd
and unnecessary. Cardinal Campeggio, the Pope’s legate, has already
arrived from Rome, and the queen will appear before a court composed of
the legate and Wolsey, together with several other cardinals.”
“The queen brought to trial!” cried the Bishop of Rochester. “The queen
arraigned to hear her honor and her rank disputed? What a shame upon
England! Who will speak for her? I would give my life to be called to
defend her! But how is it that Wolsey--the all-powerful Wolsey--has not
diverted the king from his unworthy purpose?”
“He is said to have tried; but he stands in awe of the king. You know an
ambitious man never opposes him to whom he owes his power. Nevertheless,”
added More, “I cannot believe he will dare to pronounce the Princess Mary
illegitimate. For, all laws aside, supposing even that the marriage were
annulled, the good faith in which it was contracted invests her birth
with an inalienable right.”
“I hope it may be so,” said Fisher; “but what immense calamities this
question will bring on our unhappy country!”
“I fear so, my friend,” replied More. “At present, the people are pledged
to the queen’s cause; it could not be otherwise, she is so much beloved
and esteemed; and they declare, if the king does succeed in repudiating
Catherine, that he will find it impossible to deprive his daughter of her
right to reign over them.”
“And Wolsey,” replied the bishop thoughtfully, “will be called to
sit in judgment on his sovereign! He will be against her! And this
Campeggio--what says he in the matter?”
“We believe,” replied More, “that he will sustain the queen; he seems to
possess great firmness and integrity of character. His first interview
with the king gave us great hopes. Henry has overwhelmed him with
protestations of his entire submission, but all his artifices have been
frustrated by the discernment and prudence of the Italian cardinal. His
impenetrable silence on the subject of his own personal opinions has
plunged the king into despair. Since that day he has honored him with
incessant visits, has offered him the rich bishopric of Durham, and
worked unceasingly to corrupt his integrity by promises and flattery.”
“How keenly the queen must suffer,” said Fisher--“she that I saw, at
the time of her arrival in the kingdom, so young, so beautiful, and so
idolized by Henry!”
“Alas! I think so,” said More. “For some time I have found it impossible
to approach her. However, she appears in public as usual, always gracious
and affable; there is no change in her appearance. The queen is truly
a most admirable woman. During your absence, an epidemic made its
appearance called the ‘sweating sickness,’ which made terrible ravages.
Wolsey fled from his palace, several noblemen belonging to his household
having died very suddenly of the disease. The king was greatly alarmed;
he never left the queen for a moment, and united with her in constant
prayers to God, firmly believing that her petitions would avail to stay
the pestilence. He immediately despatched Anne Boleyn to her father,
where she was attacked by the disease, and truly we would have felt
no regret at her loss if the Lord in taking her had only deigned to
show mercy to her soul. At one time we believed the king had entirely
reformed, but, alas! the danger had scarcely passed when he recalled Anne
Boleyn, and is again estranged from the queen.”
“Death gives us terrible lessons,” replied the Bishop of Rochester. “In
his presence we judge of all things wisely. The illusions of time are
dissipated, to give place to the realities of eternity!” As the bishop
said these words, several persons who had called to see Sir Thomas
entered the room. Conspicuous among them was Cromwell, the protégé of
Wolsey. This man was both false and sinister, who made use of any means
that led to the acquisition of fortune. He possessed the arts of intrigue
and flattery. To a profound dissimulation he added an air of politeness
and a knowledge of the world that, in general, caused him to be well
received in society. A close scrutiny of his character, however, made
it evident that there was something in the depths of this man’s soul
rendering him unworthy of any confidence. To him, vice and virtue were
words devoid of any meaning. When he found a man was no longer necessary
to his designs, or that he could not in some manner use him, he made no
further effort to conciliate or retain his friendship. He saluted Sir
Thomas and the Bishop of Rochester with a quiet ease, and seated himself
beside young Cranmer--“with whom I am very well acquainted,” he remarked.
For Cromwell, like all other intriguers, assumed intimacy with all the
world.
Scarcely had he uttered the words when a Mr. Williamson was ushered in,
who had returned to London a few days before, after a long absence on the
Continent.
“And so you are back, Mr. Williamson,” cried More, taking his hand. “You
are just from Germany, I believe? Well, do tell us how matters stand in
that country. It seems, from what we hear, everything is in commotion
there.”
“Your supposition is quite correct, sir,” replied Williamson in a
half-serious, half-jesting manner. “The emperor is furious against our
king, and has sent ambassadors to Rome to oppose the divorce. But the
empire is greatly disturbed by religious dissensions, therefore I doubt
if he will be able to give the subject as much attention as he desires.
New reformers are every day springing up. The foremost now is Bacer,
a Dominican monk; then comes Zwingle, the curate of Zürich--where he
endeavored to abolish the Mass, to the great scandal of the people--and
there is still another, named Œcolampadius, who has joined Zwingle. But
strangest of all is that these reformers, among themselves, agree in
nothing. The one admits a dogma, the other rejects it; to-day they think
this, to-morrow that. Every day some new doctrine is promulgated. Luther
has a horror of Zwingle, and they mutually damn each other. The devil is
no longer able to recognize himself. They occasionally try to patch up a
reconciliation, and agree altogether to believe a certain doctrine, but
the compact is scarcely drawn up before the whole affair is upset again.”
Cranmer, while listening to this discourse, moved uneasily in his chair,
until at length, unable to restrain himself longer, he interrupted
Williamson in a sharp, cutting manner that he endeavored to soften.
“In truth, sir, you speak very slightingly of these learned and
distinguished men. And only, it seems, because they demand a reform in
the morals of the clergy, and preach against and denounce the abuses of
the church in the matter of indulgences.”
“Beautiful reformers!” cried Williamson. “They protest to-day against an
abuse which they alone have felt as such, and that but for a very short
time. And permit me to insist on your observing a fact, which it is by no
means necessary or expedient to forget, that this quarrel originated in
the displeasure felt by Luther because it was not to his own order, but
to that of the Dominicans, to whom the distribution of indulgences was
entrusted.”
“That may be possible, sir,” interrupted Cranmer, “but at least you will
not deny that the immorality of the German clergy imperatively demanded a
thorough reformation.”
“It is quite possible, my dear sir, that I may not be ready at once to
agree with you in your opinions. But if the German church has become
relaxed in morals, it is the fault of those only who before their
elevation to the holy office had not, as they were bound to have, the
true spirit of their vocation. But I pray you, on this point of morals,
it will not do to boast of the severity of these new apostles. The
disciples of Christ left their wives, when called to ‘go into all the
world and preach the Gospel,’ but these men begin by taking wives. Luther
has married a young and beautiful nun, an act that has almost driven his
followers to despair, and scandalized and excited the ridicule of the
whole city. As to Bucer, he is already married to his second wife!”
“What!” cried the bishop, “these men marry! Marry--in the face of the
holy church! Do they forget the solemn vows of chastity they have
made?--for they are all either priests or monks.”
“Their vows! Oh! they _retract_ their vows, they say. These ‘vows’ are
what they call _abuses_; and the priests of this so severely reformed
church will hereafter enjoy the inestimable privilege of marrying.”
Whilst this conversation had been going on, Sir Thomas kept his eyes
closely fixed on Cranmer, trying to discover, from the expression of his
pale, meagre face, the impression made on him by the conversation. He
was well convinced that latterly Cranmer, although he had already taken
orders, maintained the new doctrines with all the influence he possessed.
And the reason why he had so thoroughly espoused them was because of a
violent passion conceived for the daughter of Osiander, one of the chief
reformers.
Born of a poor and obscure family, he had embraced the ecclesiastical
state entirely from motives of interest and ambition, and without the
slightest vocation, his sole aim being to advance his own interests
and fortunes by every possible means, and he had already succeeded in
ingratiating himself with the Earl of Wiltshire, who, together with all
the family of Anne Boleyn, were his devoted patrons and friends. It was
by these means that he was afterwards elevated to the archiepiscopal see
of Canterbury, where we will find him servilely devoting himself to the
interests of Henry VIII., and at last dying the death of a traitor.
Influenced by such motives, Cranmer warmly defended the new doctrines,
bringing forward every available argument, and ended by declaring he
thought it infinitely better that the priests should be allowed to marry
than be exposed to commit sin.
“Nothing obliges them to commit sin,” cried the Bishop of Rochester, who
was no longer able to maintain silence. “On the contrary, sir, every
law and regulation of the discipline and canons of the church tends to
inspire and promote the most immaculate purity of morals. These rules
may seem hard to those who have embraced the ecclesiastical state from
motives of pride and an ambitious self-interest, and without having
received from God the graces necessary for the performance of the duties
of so exalted and holy a ministry. This is why we so often have to grieve
over the misconduct of so many of the clergy. But if they complain of
their condition now, what will it be when they have wives and families
to increase their cares and add to their responsibilities? The priest!”
continued the bishop, seeming to penetrate the very depths of Cranmer’s
narrow, contracted soul, “have you ever reflected upon the sublimity of
his vocation? The priest is the father of the orphan, the brother of the
poor, the consoler of the dying, the spiritual support of the criminal
on the scaffold, the merciful judge of the assassin in his dungeon. Say,
do you not think the entire human race a family sufficiently large, its
duties sufficiently extended, its responsibilities, wants, and cares
sufficiently arduous and pressing? How could a priest do more, when his
duty now requires him to devote, and give himself entirely to, each and
every one of the human family? No; a priest is a man who has made a
solemn vow to become an angel. If he does not intend to fulfil that vow,
then let him never pronounce it!”
“O Rochester!” cried Sir Thomas More, greatly moved, “how I delight to
hear you express yourself in this manner!”
And Sir Thomas spoke with all sincerity, for the bishop, without being
conscious of it, had faithfully described his own life and character,
and those who knew and loved him found no difficulty in recognizing the
portrait.
As Sir Thomas spoke, the door again opened, and all arose respectfully
on seeing the Duke of Norfolk appear--that valiant captain, to whom
England was indebted for her victory gained on the field of Flodden.
He was accompanied by the youngest and best-beloved of his sons, the
young Henry, Earl of Surrey. Even at his very tender age, the artless
simplicity and graceful manners of this beautiful child commanded the
admiration of all, while his brilliant intellect and lively imagination
announced him as the future favorite and cherished poet of the age.
Alas! how rapidly fled those golden years of peace and happiness. Later,
and Norfolk, this proud father, so happy in being the parent of such a
son, lived to behold the head of that noble boy fall upon the scaffold!
The crime of which Henry VIII. will accuse him will be that of having
united his arms with those of Edward the Confessor, whose royal blood
mingled with that which flowed in his own veins.
Sir Thomas approached the duke and saluted him with great deference. The
Bishop of Rochester insisted on resigning him his chair, but the duke
declined, and seated himself in the midst of the company.
“I was not aware,” said he, turning graciously towards the bishop, “that
Sir Thomas was enjoying such good company. I congratulate myself on the
return of my Lord of Rochester. He will listen, I am sure, with lively
interest to the recital I have come to make; for I must inform you,
gentlemen, I am just from Blackfriars, where the king summoned me this
morning in great haste, to assist, with some of the highest dignitaries
of the kingdom, at the examination of the queen before the assembly of
cardinals.”
He had scarcely uttered these words when an expression of profound
amazement overspread the features of all present. More was by no means
the least affected.
“The queen!” he cried. “Has she then appeared in person? And so
unexpectedly and rudely summoned! They have done this in order that she
might not be prepared with her defence!”
“I know not,” replied the duke; “but I shall never be able to forget
the sad and imposing scene. When we entered, the cardinals and the two
legates were seated on a platform covered with purple cloth; the king
seated at their right. We were arranged behind his chair in perfect
silence. Very soon the queen entered, dressed in the deepest mourning.
She took her seat on the left of the platform, facing the king. When the
king’s name was called he arose, and remained standing and in silence.
But when the queen was in her turn summoned, she arose, and replied,
with great dignity, that she boldly protested against her judges for
three important reasons: first, because she was a stranger; secondly,
because they were all in possession of royal benefices, which had been
bestowed on them by her adversary; and, thirdly, that she had grave and
all-important reasons for believing that she would not obtain justice
from a tribunal so constituted. She added that she had already appealed
to the Pope, and would not submit to the judgment of this court. Having
said these words, she stood in silence, but when she heard them declare
her appeal should not be submitted to the Pope, she passed before the
cardinals, and, walking proudly across the entire hall, she threw herself
at the feet of the king.
“It would be impossible,” continued Norfolk, “to describe the emotion
excited by this movement.
“‘Sire,’ she cried, with a respectful but firm and decided tone, ‘I beg
you to regard me with compassion. Pity me as a woman, as a stranger
without friends on whom I can rely, without a single disinterested
adviser to whom I can turn for counsel! I call upon God to witness,’
she continued, raising her expressive eyes towards heaven, ‘that I have
always been to you a loyal, faithful wife, and have made it my constant
duty to conform in all things to your will; that I have loved those whom
you have loved, whether I knew them to be my enemies or my friends. For
many years I have been your wife; I am the mother of your children. God
knows, when I married you, I was an unsullied virgin, and since that time
I have never brought reproach on the sanctity of my marriage vows. Your
own conscience bears witness to the truth of what I say. If you can find
a single fault with which to reproach me, then will I pledge you my word
to bow my head in shame, and at once leave your presence; but, if not, I
pray you in God’s holy name to render me justice.’
“While she was speaking, a low murmur of approbation was heard throughout
the assembly, followed by a long, unbroken silence. The king grew deadly
pale, but made no reply to the queen, who arose, and was leaving the
hall, when Henry made a signal to the Duke of Suffolk to detain her. He
followed her, and made every effort to induce her to return, but in vain.
Turning haughtily round, she said, in a tone sufficiently distinct to be
heard by the entire assembly:
“‘Go, tell the king, your master, that until this hour I have never
disobeyed him, and that I regret being compelled to do so now.’
“Saying these words, she immediately turned and left the hall, followed
by her ladies in waiting.
“Her refusal to remain longer in the presence of her judges, and the
touching, unstudied eloquence of the appeal she had made, cast the
tribunal into a state of great embarrassment, and the honorable judges
seemed to wish most heartily they had some one else to decide for them;
when suddenly the king arose, and, turning haughtily towards them, spoke:
“‘Sirs,’ he said, ‘most cheerfully and with perfect confidence do
I present my testimony, bearing witness to the spotless virtue and
unsullied integrity of the queen. Her character, her conduct, in every
particular, has been above reproach. But it is impossible for me to
live in the state of constant anxiety this union causes me to suffer.
My conscience keeps me in continual dread because of having married
this woman, who was the betrothed wife of my own brother. I will use no
dissimulation, my lords; I know very well that many of you believe I
have been persuaded by the Cardinal of York to make this appeal for a
divorce. But I declare in your presence this day, this is an entirely
false impression, and that, on the contrary, the cardinal has earnestly
contended against the scruples which have disturbed my soul. But, I
declare, against my own will, and in spite of all my regrets, his
opinions have not been able to restore to me the tranquillity of a heart
without reproach. I have, in consequence, found it necessary to confer
again with the Bishop of Tarbes, who has, unhappily, only confirmed the
fears I already entertain. I have consulted my confessor and many other
prelates, who have all advised me to submit this question to the tribunal
of our Holy Father, the Sovereign Pontiff. To this end, my lords, you
have been invested by him with his own supreme authority and spiritual
power. I will listen to you as I would listen to him--that is to say,
with the most entire submission. I wish, however, to remind you again
that my duty towards my subjects requires me to prevent whatever might
have the effect in the future of disturbing their tranquillity; and,
unfortunately, I have but too strong reasons for fearing that, at some
future day, the legitimacy of the right of the Princess Mary to the
throne may be disputed. It is with entire confidence that I await your
solution of a question so important to the happiness of my subjects and
the peace of my kingdom. I have no doubt that you will be able to remove
all the obstacles placed in my way.’
“Saying these words, the king retired, and started instantly for his
palace at Greenwich. The noblemen generally followed him, but I remained
to witness the end of what proved to be a tumultuous and stormy debate.
Nevertheless, after a long discussion, they decided to go on with the
investigation, to hear the advocates of the queen, and continue the
proceedings in spite of her protest.”
“Who is the queen’s advocate?” demanded the Bishop of Rochester.
“He has not yet been appointed,” replied Norfolk. “It seems to me it
would only be just to let the queen select her own counsel.”
“But she will refuse, without a doubt,” replied Cromwell, “after the
manner she has adopted to defend herself.”
They continued to converse for a long time on this subject, which filled
with anxious apprehension the heart of Sir Thomas, as well as that of his
faithful friend, the good Bishop of Rochester.
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE BIRTH-PLACE OF S. VINCENT DE PAUL
“I love all waste
And solitary places where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean and the shore
More barren than its billows.”
--_Shelley._
The Landes--that long, desolate tract on the western coast of France
between the Gironde and the Adour, with its vast forests of melancholy
pines, its lone moors and solitary deserts, its broad marshes, and its
dunes of sand that creep relentlessly on as if they had life--appeal
wonderfully to the imagination, that _folle du logis_, as Montaigne calls
it, but which, in spite of him, we love to feed. One may travel for hours
through these vast steppes covered with heather without discovering the
smoke of a single chimney, or anything to relieve the monotonous horizon,
unless a long line of low sand-hills that look like billows swayed to
and fro in the wind; or some low tree standing out against the cloudless
heavens, perhaps half buried in the treacherous sands; or a gaunt
peasant, the very silhouette of a man, on his stilts, “five feet above
contradiction,” like Voltaire’s preacher, perhaps with his knitting-work
in his hands, or a distaff under his arm, as if fresh from the feet of
Omphale, driving his flock before him--all birds of one feather, or
sheep of one wool; for he is clad in a shaggy sheepskin coat, and looks
as if he needed shearing as much as any of them. Or perhaps this Knight
of the Sable Fleece--for the sheep of the Landes are mostly black--is
on one of the small, light horses peculiar to the region, said to have
an infusion of Arabian blood--thanks to the Saracen invaders--which are
well adapted to picking their way over quaking bogs and moving sands, but
unfortunately are fast degenerating from lack of care in maintaining the
purity of the breed.
During the winter season these extensive heaths are converted by the
prolonged rains into immense marshes, as the impermeable _alios_ within
six inches of the surface prevents the absorption of moisture. The
peasant is then obliged to shut himself up with his beasts in his low,
damp cottage, with peat for his fuel, a pine torch for his candle,
brackish water relieved by a dash of vinegar for drink, meagre broth,
corn bread, and perhaps salt fish for his dinner. Whole generations are
said to live under one roof in the Landes, so thoroughly are the people
imbued with the patriarchal spirit. Woman has her rights here--at least
in the house. The old _dauna_ (from _domina_, perhaps) rules the little
kingdom with a high hand, including her sons and her sons’ wives down to
the remotest generation, with undisputed sway. It is the very paradise
of mothers-in-law. The _paterfamilias_ seldom interferes if his soup is
ready at due time and she makes both ends meet at the end of the year,
with a trifle over for a barrel of _pique-pout_ to be indulged in on
extraordinary occasions. From La Teste to the valley of the Gave this
old house-mother is queen of the hive, active, thrifty, keen of eye, and
sharp of tongue. The slightest murmur is frozen into silence beneath the
arctic ray of her Poyser-like glance. She is a hawk by day and an owl by
night. She directs the spinning and weaving of the wool and flax, orders
the meals, and superintends the wardrobe of the whole colony. The land
is so poor that it is seldom divided among the children. The oldest heir
becomes head of the family, and they all fare better by sharing in the
general income. In unity there is safety--and economy.
At every door is the clumsy machine for breaking the flax that is spun
during the long winter evenings for the sail-makers of Bayonne or the
weavers of Béarn, whose linen, if not equal to that of Flanders, is
as good as that of Normandy. Before every house is also the huge oven
where the bread is baked for general consumption. Flocks of geese paddle
from pool to pool in the marshes, and wild ducks breed undisturbed in
the fens. In the villages on the borders of the Landes you hear in the
morning a sharp whistle that might serve for a locomotive. It is the
swineherd summoning his charge, which issue in a gallop, two or three
from each house, to seek their food in the moors. They all come back in
the evening, and go to their own pens to get the bucket of bran that
awaits them. Feeding thus in the wild, their meat acquires a peculiar
flavor. Most of these animals go into the market. The hams of Bayonne
have always been famous. We might say they are historic, for Strabo
speaks of them.
When the rainy season is at an end, these bogs and stagnant pools give
out a deadly miasma in the burning sun, engendering fevers, dysentery,
and the fatal pellagra. The system is rapidly undermined, and the peasant
seldom attains to an advanced age. He marries at twenty and is old at
forty.
A kind of awe comes over the soul in traversing this region, and yet
it has a certain mysterious attraction which draws us on and on, as
if nature had some marvellous secret in store for us. The atmosphere
is charged with a thin vapor that quivers in the blazing sun. Strange
insects are in the air. A sense of the infinite, such as we feel in the
midst of the ocean, comes over us. We grow breathless as the air--grow
silent as the light that gilds the vast landscape before us. One of the
greatest of the sons of the Landes--the Père de Ravignan--says: “Solitude
is the _patrie des forts_: silence is their prayer.” One feels how true
it is in these boundless moors. It is the only prayer fit for this realm
of silence, where one is brought closer and closer to the heart of
nature, and restored, as it were, at least in a degree, to the primeval
relation of man with his Creator.
Carlyle says the finest nations in the world, the English and the
American, are all going away into wind and tongue. We recommend a season
in the Landes, where one becomes speedily impressed that “silence is the
eternal duty of man.”
We wonder such a region should be inhabited. The _daunas_, we hope, never
have courage enough to raise their still voices in the open air. We fancy
wooing carried on in true Shaksperian style:
“O Imogen! I’ll speak to thee in silence.”
--“What should Cordelia do? Love and be silent.”
However this may be, the Landes are peopled, though thinly. Here and
there at immense distances we come to a cottage. The men are shepherds,
fishermen, or _résiniers_, as the turpentine-producers are called.
Pliny, Dioscorides, and other ancient writers speak of the inhabitants
as collecting the yellow amber thrown up by the sea, and trafficking in
beeswax, resin, and pitch. The Phœnicians and Carthaginians initiated
them into the mysteries of mining and forging. The Moors taught them the
value of their cork-trees. They still keep bees that feed on the purple
bells of the heather, and sell vast quantities of wax for the candles
used in the churches of France--_cierges_, as they are called, from _cire
vierge_--virgin wax, wrought by chaste bees, and alone fit for the sacred
altars of Jesus and Mary.
Ausonius thus speaks of the pursuits of the people:
“Mercatus ne agitas leviore numismate captans,
Insanis quod mox pretiis gravis auctio vendat,
Albentisque sevi globulos et pinguia ceræ
Pondera, Naryciamque picem, scissamque papyrum
Fumantesque olidum paganica lumina tœdas.”
They are devoting more and more attention to the production of turpentine
by planting the maritime pine which grew here in the days of Strabo,
and thereby reclaiming the vast tracts of sand thrown up by the sea.
A priest, the Abbé Desbiez, and his brother are said to have first
conceived the idea of reclaiming their native deserts and staying the
progress of the quicksands which had buried so many places, and were
moving unceasingly on at the rate of about twenty-five yards a year,
threatening the destruction of many more. That was about a hundred
years ago. A few years after M. Brémontier, a French engineer, tested
the plan by planting, as far as his means allowed, the maritime pine,
the strong, fibrous roots of which take tenacious hold of the slightest
crevice in the rock, and absorb the least nutriment in the soil. But this
experiment was slow to lead to any important result, as the _pinada_, or
pine plantations, involve an outlay that makes no return for years. It
was not till Louis Philippe’s time that the work was carried on with any
great activity. Napoleon III. also greatly extended the plantations--the
importance of which became generally acknowledged--not only to arrest the
progress of the sands, but to meet the want of turpentine in the market,
so long dependent on imports.
In ten years the trees begin to yield an income. Each acre then furnishes
twelve or fifteen thousand poles for vineyards or the coalman. The
prudent owner does not tap his trees till they are twenty-five years old.
By that time they are four feet in circumference and yield turpentine
to the value of fifty or sixty francs a year. Then the _résinier_ comes
with his hatchet and makes an incision low down in the trunk, from which
the resin flows into an earthern jar or a hollow in the ground. These
jars are emptied at due intervals, and the incision from time to time
is widened. Later, others are made parallel to it. These are finally
extended around the tree. With prudence this treatment may be continued
a century; for this species of pine is very hardy if not exhausted. When
the poor tree is near its end, it is hacked without any mercy and bled to
death. Then it is only fit for the sawmill, wood-pile, or coal-pit.
Poor and desolate as the Landes are, they have had their share of great
men. “Every path on the globe may lead to the door of a hero,” says some
one. We have spoken of La Teste. This was the stronghold of the stout old
Captals de Buch,[4] belonging to the De Graillys, one of the historic
families of the country. No truer specimen of the lords of the Landes
could be found than these old captals, who, poor, proud, and adventurous,
entered the service of the English, to whom they remained faithful as
long as that nation had a foothold in the land. Their name and deeds are
familiar to every reader of Froissart. The nearness of Bordeaux, and the
numerous privileges and exemptions granted the foresters and herdsmen of
the Landes, explain the strong attachment of the people to the English
crown. The De Graillys endeavored by alliances to aggrandize their
family, and finally became loyal subjects of France under Louis XI. They
intermarried with the Counts of Foix and Béarn, and their vast landed
possessions were at length united with those of the house of Albret.
Where would the latter have been without them? And without the Albrets,
where the Bourbons?
And this reminds us of the Sires of Albret, another and still more
renowned family of the Landes.
Near the source of the Midou, among the pine forests of Maremsin, you
come to a village of a thousand people called Labrit, the ancient
Leporetum, or country of hares, whence Lebret, Labrit, and Albret. Here
rose the house of Albret from obscurity to reign at last over Navarre and
unite the most of ancient Aquitaine to the crown of France. The history
of these lords of the heather is a marvel of wit and good-luck. Great
hunters of hares and seekers of heiresses, they were always on the scent
for advantageous alliances, not too particular about the age or face of
the lady, provided they won broad lands or a fat barony. Once in their
clutches, they seldom let go. They never allowed a daughter to succeed to
any inheritance belonging to the _seigneurie_ of Albret as long as there
was a male descendant. Always receive, and never give, was their motto.
Their daughters had their wealth of beauty for a dowry, with a little
money or a troublesome fief liable to reversion.
The Albrets are first heard of in the XIth century, when the Benedictine
abbot of S. Pierre at Condom, alarmed for the safety of Nérac, one of
the abbatial possessions, called upon his brother, Amanieu d’Albret, for
aid. The better to defend the monk’s property, the Sire of Albret built a
castle on the left bank of the Baïse, and played the _rôle_ of protector
so well that at last his descendants are found sole lords of Nérac, on
the public square of which now stands the statue of Henry IV., the most
glorious of the race. The second Amanieu went to the Crusades under the
banner of Raymond of St. Gilles, and entered Jerusalem next to Godfrey
of Bouillon, to whom an old historian makes him related, nobody knows
how. Oihenard says the Albrets descended from the old kings of Navarre,
and a MS. of the XIVth century links them with the Counts of Bigorre;
but this was probably to flatter the pride of the house after it rose to
importance. We find a lord of Albret in the service of the Black Prince
with a thousand lances (five thousand men), and owner of Casteljaloux,
Lavazan, and somehow of the abbey of Sauve-Majour; but not finding the
English service sufficiently lucrative, he passed over to the enemy.
Charles d’Albret was so able a captain that he quartered the lilies of
France on his shield, and held the constable’s sword till the fatal
battle of Agincourt. Alain d’Albret made a fine point in the game by
marrying Françoise de Bretagne, who, though ugly, was the niece and only
heiress of Jean de Blois, lord of Périgord and Limoges. His son had still
better luck. He married Catherine of Navarre. If he lost his possessions
beyond the Pyrenees, he kept the county of Foix, and soon added the lands
of Astarac. Henry I. of Navarre, by marrying Margaret of Valois, acquired
all the spoils of the house of Armagnac. Thus the princely house of
Navarre, under their daughter Jeanne, who married Antoine de Bourbon, was
owner of all Gascony and part of Guienne. It was Henry IV. of France who
finally realized the expression of the blind faith of the house of Albret
in its fortune, expressed in the prophetic device graven on the Château
de Coarraze, where he passed his boyhood: “_Lo que ha de ser no puede
faltar_”--That which must be will be!
But we have not yet come to the door of our hero. There is another native
of the Landes whose fame has gone out through the whole earth--whose
whole life and aim were in utter contrast with the spirit of these
old lords of the heather. The only armor he ever put on was that of
righteousness; the only sword, that of the truth; the only jewel, that
which the old rabbis say Abraham wore, the light of which raised up the
bowed down and healed the sick, and, after his death, was placed among
the stars! It need not be said we refer to S. Vincent de Paul, the great
initiator of public charity in France, who by his benevolence perhaps
effected as much for the good of the kingdom as Richelieu with his
political genius. He was born during the religious conflicts of the XVIth
century, in the little hamlet of Ranquine, in the parish of Pouy, on the
border of the Landes, a few miles from Dax. It must not be supposed the
_particule_ in his name is indicative of nobility. In former times people
who had no name but that given them at the baptismal font often added the
place of their birth to prevent confusion. S. Vincent was the son of a
peasant, and spent his childhood in watching his father’s scanty flock
among the moors. The poor cottage in which he was born is still standing,
and near it the gigantic old oak to the hollow of which he used to retire
to pray, both of which are objects of veneration to the pious pilgrim
of all ranks and all lands. Somewhere in these vast solitudes--whether
among the ruins of Notre Dame de Buglose, destroyed a little before by
the Huguenots, or in his secret oratory in the oak, we cannot say--he
heard the mysterious voice which once whispered to Joan of Arc among
the forests of Lorraine--a voice difficult to resist, which decided his
vocation in life. He resolved to enter the priesthood. The Franciscans
of Dax lent him books and a cell, and gave him a pittance for the love
of God; but he finished his studies and took his degree at Toulouse, as
was only discovered by papers found after his death, so unostentatious
was his life. He partly defrayed his expenses at Toulouse by becoming
the tutor of some young noblemen of Buzet. Near the latter place was a
solitary mountain chapel in the woods, not far from the banks of the
Tarn, called Notre Dame de Grâce. Its secluded position, the simplicity
of its decorations, and the devotion he experienced in this quiet
oratory, attracted the pious student, and he often retired there to pray
before the altar of Our Lady of Grace. It was there he found strength to
take upon himself the yoke of the priesthood--a yoke angels might fear
to bear. It was there, in solitude and silence, assisted by a priest and
a clerk, that he offered his first Mass; for, so terrified was he by the
importance and sublimity of this divine function, he had not the courage
to celebrate it in public. This chapel is still standing, and is annually
crowded with pilgrims on the festival of S. Vincent of Paul. It is good
to kneel on the worn flag-stones where the saint once prayed, and pour
out one’s soul before the altar that witnessed the fervor of his first
Mass. The superior-general of the Lazarists visited this interesting
chapel in 1851, accompanied by nearly fifty Sisters of Charity. They
brought a relic of the saint, a chalice and some vestments for the use of
the chaplain, and a bust of S. Vincent for the new altar to his memory.
Every step in S. Vincent’s life is marked by the unmistakable hand of
divine Providence. Captured in a voyage by Algerine pirates, he is sold
in the market-place of Tunis, that he might learn to sympathize with
those who are in bonds; he falls into the hands of a renegade, who,
with his whole family, is soon converted and makes his escape from the
country. S. Vincent presents them to the papal legate at Avignon, and
goes to Rome, whence he returns, charged with a confidential mission by
Cardinal d’Ossat. He afterwards becomes a tutor in the family of the
Comte de Gondi--another providential event. The count is governor-general
of the galleys, and the owner of vast possessions in Normandy. S. Vincent
labors among the convicts, and, if he cannot release them from their
bonds, he teaches them to bear their sufferings in a spirit of expiation.
He establishes rural missions in Normandy, and founds the College of
Bons-Enfants and the house of S. Lazare at Paris.
A holy widow, Mme. Legros, falls under his influence, and charitable
organizations of ladies are formed, and sisters for the special service
of the sick are established at S. Nicolas du Chardonnet. Little children,
abandoned by unnatural mothers, are dying of cold and hunger in the
streets; S. Vincent opens a foundling asylum, and during the cold winter
nights he goes alone through the most dangerous quarters of old Paris
in search of these poor waifs of humanity.[5] Clerical instruction is
needed, and Richelieu, at his instance, endows the first ecclesiastical
seminary. The moral condition of the army excites the saint’s compassion,
and the cardinal authorizes missionaries among the soldiers. The province
of Lorraine is suffering from famine. Mothers even devour their own
children. In a short time S. Vincent collects sixteen hundred thousand
livres for their relief. Under the regency of Anne of Austria he becomes
a member of the Council of Ecclesiastical Affairs. In the wars of
the Fronde he is for peace, and negotiates between the queen and the
parliament. The foundation of a hospital for old men marks the end of
his noble, unselfish life. The jewel of charity never ceases to glow
in his breast. It is his great bequest to his spiritual children. How
potent it has been is proved by the incalculable good effected to this
day by the Lazarists, Sisters of Charity, and Society of S. Vincent of
Paul--beautiful constellations in the firmament of the church!
In the midst of his honors S. Vincent never forgot his humble origin, but
often referred to it with the true spirit of _ama nesciri et pro nihilo
reputari_. Not that he was inaccessible to human weakness, but he knew
how to resist it. We read in his interesting _Life_ by Abbé Maynard that
the porter of the College of Bons-Enfants informed the superior one day
that a poorly-clad peasant, styling himself his nephew, was at the door.
S. Vincent blushed and ordered him to be taken up to his room. Then he
blushed for having blushed, and, going down into the street, embraced his
nephew and led him into the court, where, summoning all the professors of
the college, he presented the confused youth: “Gentlemen, this is the
most respectable of my family.” And he continued, during the remainder of
his visit, to introduce him to visitors of every rank as if he were some
great lord, in order to avenge his first movement of pride. And when, not
long after, he made a retreat, he publicly humbled himself before his
associates: “Brethren, pray for one who through pride wished to take his
nephew secretly to his room because he was a peasant and poorly dressed.”
S. Vincent returned only once to his native place after he began his
apostolic career. This was at the close of a mission among the convicts
of Bordeaux. During his visit he solemnly renewed his baptismal vows
in the village church where he had been baptized and made his First
Communion, and on the day of his departure he went with bare feet on a
pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Buglose, among whose ruins he had so often
prayed in his childhood, but which was now rebuilt. He was accompanied,
not only by his relatives, but by all the villagers, who were justly
proud of their countryman. He sang a solemn Mass at the altar of Our
Lady, and afterwards assembled the whole family around the table for a
modest repast, at the end of which he rose to take leave of them. They
all fell at his feet and implored his blessing. “Yes, I give you my
blessing,” replied he, much affected, “but I bless you poor and humble,
and beg our Lord to continue among you the grace of holy poverty.
Never abandon the condition in which you were born. This is my earnest
recommendation, which I beg you to transmit as a heritage to your
children. Farewell for ever!”
His advice was religiously kept. By mutual assistance his family might
have risen above its original obscurity. Some of his mother’s family were
advocates at the parliament of Bordeaux, and it would have been easy to
obtain offices that would have given them, at least, prominence in their
own village; but they clung to their rural pursuits. The advice of their
sainted relative was too precious a legacy to be renounced.
Not that S. Vincent was insensible to their condition or unambitious
by nature, but he knew the value of the hidden life and the perils
of worldly ambition. We have on this occasion another glimpse of his
struggles with nature. Hardly had he left his relatives before he gave
vent to his emotion in a flood of tears, and he almost reproached himself
for leaving them in their poverty. But let us quote his own words: “The
day I left home I was so filled with sorrow at separating from my poor
relatives that I wept as I went along--wept almost incessantly. Then came
the thought of aiding them and bettering their condition; of giving so
much to this one, and so much to that. While my heart thus melted within
me, I divided all I had with them. Yes, even what I had not; and I say
this to my confusion, for God perhaps permitted it to make me comprehend
the value of the evangelical counsel. For three months I felt this
importunate longing to promote the interests of my brothers and sisters.
It constantly weighed on my poor heart. During this time, when I felt a
little relieved, I prayed God to deliver me from this temptation, and
persevered so long in my prayer that at length he had pity on me and
took away this excessive tenderness for my relations; and though they
have been needy, and still are, the good God has given me the grace to
commit them to his Providence, and to regard them as better off than if
they were in an easier condition.”
S. Vincent was equally rigid as to his own personal necessities, as may
be seen by the following words from his own lips: “When I put a morsel of
bread to my mouth, I say to myself: Wretched man, hast thou earned the
bread thou art going to eat--the bread that comes from the labor of the
poor?”
Such is the spirit of the saints. In these days, when most people are
struggling to rise in the world, many by undue means, and to an unlawful
height, it is well to recall this holy example; it is good to get a
glimpse into the heart of a saint, and to remember there are still many
in the world and in the cloister who strive to counterbalance all this
ambition and love of display by their humility and self-denial.
Immediately after S. Vincent’s canonization, in 1737, the inhabitants of
Pouy, desirous of testifying their veneration for his memory, removed the
house where he was born a short distance from its original place, without
changing its primitive form in the least, and erected a small chapel
on the site, till means could be obtained for building a church. The
great Revolution put a stop to the plan. In 1821 a new effort was made,
a committee appointed, and a subscription begun which soon amounted to
thirty thousand francs; but at the revolution of 1830 material interests
prevailed, and the funds were appropriated to the construction of roads.
The ecclesiastical authorities at length took the matter in hand, and
formed the plan, not only of building a church, but surrounding it with
the various charitable institutions founded by S. Vincent--a hospital
for the aged, asylums for orphans and foundlings, and perhaps a _ferme
modèle_ in the Landes.
In 1850 the Bishop of Aire appealed to the Catholic world for aid. Pius
IX. blessed the undertaking. On the Festival of the Transfiguration,
1851, the corner-stone was laid by the bishop, assisted by Père Etienne,
the superior-general of the Lazarists. Napoleon III. and the Empress
Eugénie largely contributed to the work, and in a few years the church
and hospice were completed. The consecration took place April 24, 1864,
in the presence of an immense multitude from all parts of the country.
From three o’clock in the morning there were Masses at a dozen altars,
and the hands of the priests were fatigued in administering the holy
Eucharist. Among the communicants were eight hundred members of the
Society of S. Vincent de Paul, from Bordeaux, who manifested their joy
by enthusiastic hymns. At eight in the forenoon Père Etienne, surrounded
by Lazarists and Sisters of Charity, celebrated the Holy Sacrifice at
the newly-consecrated high altar, and several novices made their vows,
among whom was a young African, a cousin of Abdel Kader. A _châsse_
containing relics of S. Vincent was brought in solemn procession from the
parish church of Pouy, where he had been held at the font and received
the divine Guest in his heart for the first time. The road was strewn
with flowers and green leaves. The weather was delightful and the heavens
radiant. At the head of the procession was borne a banner, on which S.
Vincent was represented as a shepherd, followed by all the orphans of
the new asylum and the old men of the hospice. Then came a long line
of _Enfants de Marie_ dressed in white, carrying oriflammes, followed
by the students of the colleges of Aire and Dax. Behind were fifteen
hundred members of the Society of S. Vincent de Paul, and a file of
sisters of various orders, including eight hundred Sisters of Charity,
with a great number of Lazarists in the rear. Then came thirty relatives
of S. Vincent, wearing the peasant’s costume of the district, heirs of
his virtues and simplicity--_Noblesse oblige_. Then the Polish Lazarists
with the flag of their nation, beloved by S. Vincent, and after them
the clergy of the diocese and a great number from foreign parts, among
whom was M. Eugène Boré, of Constantinople, now superior-general of the
two orders founded by the saint. The shrine came next, surrounded by
Lazarists and Sisters of Charity. Behind the canons and other dignitaries
came eight bishops, four archbishops, and Cardinal Donnet of Bordeaux,
followed by the civil authorities and an immense multitude of people
nearly two miles in extent, with banners bearing touching devices.
This grand procession of more than thirty thousand people proceeded with
the utmost order, to the sound of chants, instrumental music, and salutes
from cannon from time to time, to the square in front of the new church,
where, before an altar erected at the foot of S. Vincent’s oak, they were
addressed by Père Etienne in an eloquent, thrilling discourse, admirable
in style and glowing with imagery, suited to the fervid nature of this
southern region. He spoke of S. Vincent, not only as the man of his age
with a providential mission, but of a type suited to all ages.
The man who loved his brethren, reconciled enemies, brought the rich and
poor into one common field imbued with a common idea of sacrifice and
devotion, fed the orphan, aided the needy, and wiped away the tears of
the sufferer, is the man of all times, and especially of an age marked by
the fomentation of political passions.
The old oak was gay with streamers, the hollow was fitted up as an
oratory, before which Cardinal Donnet said Mass in the open air, after
which thousands of voices joined in the solemn _Te Deum Laudamus_, and
the thirteen prelates terminated the grand ceremony by giving their
united benediction to the kneeling crowd.
A whole flock of Sisters of Charity, with their dove-like plumage of
white and gray, took the same train as ourselves the pleasant September
morning we left Bayonne for the birth-place of S. Vincent of Paul. They
seemed like birds of good omen. They were also going to the _Berceau_
(cradle), as they called it, not on a mere pilgrimage, but to make their
annual retreat. What for, the saints alone know; for they looked like the
personification of every amiable virtue, and quite ready to spread their
white wings and take flight for heaven. It was refreshing to watch their
gentle, unaffected ways, wholly devoid of those demure airs of superior
sanctity and repulsive austerity so exasperating to us worldly-minded
people. They all made the sign of the cross as the train moved out of
the station--and a good honest one it was, as if they loved the sign
of the Son of Man, and delighted in wearing it on their breast. Some
had come from St. Sebastian, others from St. Jean de Luz, and several
from Bayonne; but they mingled like sisters of one great family of
charity. Some chatted, some took out their rosaries and went to praying
with the most cheerful air imaginable, as if it were a new refreshment
just allowed them, instead of being the daily food of their souls; and
others seemed to be studying with interest the peculiar region we were
now entering. For we were now in the Landes--low, level, monotonous, and
melancholy. The railway lay through vast forests of dusky-pines, varied
by willows and cork-trees, with here and there, at long distances, an
open tract where ripened scanty fields of corn and millet around the low
cottages of the peasants. The sides of the road were purple with heather.
The air was full of aromatic odors. Each pine had its broad gash cut by
some merciless hand, and its life-blood was slowly trickling down its
side. Passing through this sad forest, one could not help thinking of
the drear, mystic wood in Dante’s _Inferno_, where every tree encloses a
human soul with infinite capacity of suffering, and at every gash cut,
every branch lopped off, utters a despairing cry:
“Why pluck’st thou me?
Then, as the dark blood trickled down its side,
These words it added: Wherefore tear’st me thus?
Is there no touch of mercy in thy breast?
Men once were we that now are rooted here.”
Though the sun was hot, the pine needles seemed to shiver, the branches
swayed to and fro in the air, and gave out a kind of sigh which sometimes
increased into an inarticulate wail. We look up, almost expecting to see
the harpies sitting
“Each on the wild thorn of his wretched shade.”
Could we stop, we might question these maimed trees and learn some
fearful tragedy from the imprisoned spirits. Perhaps they recount them
to each other in the wild winter nights when the peasants, listening
with a kind of fear in their lone huts, start up from their beds and
say it is Rey Artus--King Arthur--who is passing by with his long train
of dogs, horses, and huntsmen, from an old legend of the time of the
English occupation which says that King Arthur, as he was hearing Mass on
Easter-day, attracted by the cries of his hounds attacking their prey,
went out at the elevation of the Host. A whirlwind carried him into the
clouds, where he has hunted ever since, and will, without cessation or
repose, till the day of judgment, only taking a fly every seven years.
The popular belief that he is passing with a great noise through space
when the winds sweep across the vast moors on stormy nights probably
embodies the old tradition of some powerful lord whose hounds and
huntsmen ruined the crops of the poor, who, in their wrath, consigned
them to endless barren hunting-fields in the spirit-land--a legend which
reminds us of the _Aasgaardsreja_ of whom Miss Bremer tells us--spirits
not good enough to merit heaven, and yet not bad enough to deserve
hell, and are therefore doomed to ride about till the end of the world,
carrying fear and disaster in their train.
In a little over an hour we arrived at Dax, a pleasant town on the banks
of the Adour, with long lines of sycamores, behind which is a hill
crowned with an old château, now belonging to the Lazarists. The place
is renowned for its thermal springs and mud-baths, known to the Romans
before its conquest by the Cæsars. It was from Aquæ Augustæ, the capital
of the ancient Tarbelli (called in the Middle Ages the _ville d’Acqs_,
or _d’Acs_, whence Dax), that the name of Aquitaine is supposed to be
derived. Pliny, the naturalist, speaking of the Aquenses, says: _Aquitani
indè nomen provinciæ_. The Bay of Biscay was once known by the name of
Sinus Tarbellicus, from the ancient Tarbelli. Lucan says:
“Tunc rura Nemossi
Qui tenet et ripas Aturri, quo littore curvo
Molliter admissum claudit Tarbellicus æquor.”
S. Vincent of Saintonge was the first apostle of the region, and fell a
martyr to his zeal. Dax formed part of the dowry of the daughter of Henry
II. of England when she married Alfonso of Castile, but it returned to
the Plantagenets in the time of Edward III. The city was an episcopal
see before the revolution of 1793. François de Noailles, one of the
most distinguished of its bishops, was famous as a diplomatist in the
XVIth century. He was sent to England on several important missions, and
finally appointed ambassador to that country in the reign of Mary Tudor.
Recalled when Philip II. induced her to declare war against France, he
landed at Calais, and, carefully examining the fortifications, his keen,
observant eye soon discovered the weak point, to which, at his arrival
in court, he at once directed the king’s attention, declaring it would
not be a difficult matter to take the place. His statements made such an
impression on King Henry, who had always found him as judicious as he was
devoted to the interests of the crown, that he resolved to lay siege to
Calais, notwithstanding the opposition of his ministers, and the Duke of
Guise began the attack January 1, 1558. The place was taken in a week.
It had cost the English a year’s siege two hundred and ten years before.
Three weeks after its surrender Cardinal Hippolyte de Ferrara, Archbishop
of Auch (the son of Lucretia Borgia, who married Alphonso d’Este, Duke
of Ferrara) wrote François de Noailles as follows: “No one can help
acknowledging the great hand you had in the taking of Calais, as it was
actually taken at the very place you pointed out.” French historians have
been too forgetful of the hand the Bishop of Dax had in the taking of a
place so important to the interests of the nation, which added so much to
the glory of the French arms, and was so humiliating to England, whose
anguish was echoed by the queen when she exclaimed that if her heart
could be opened the very name of Calais would be found written therein!
This great churchman was no less successful in his embassy to Venice,
where he triumphed over the haughty pretensions of Philip II., and, as
Brantôme says, “won great honor and affection.” After five years in Italy
he returned to Dax, where he devoted most of his revenues to relieve
the misery that prevailed at that fearful time of religious war. Dax,
as he said, was “the poorest see in France.” In 1571 he was appointed
ambassador to Constantinople by Charles IX. Florimond de Raymond, an old
writer of that day, tells us the bishop was at first troubled as to his
presentation to the sultan, who only regarded the highest dignitaries
as the dust of his feet, and exacted ceremonies which the ambassador
considered beneath the dignity of a bishop and a representative of
France. He resolved not to submit to them, and, thanks to his pleasing
address, and handsome person dressed for the occasion in red _cramoisie_
and cloth of gold, he was not subjected to them. Moreover, by his
fascinating manners and agreeable conversation, he became a great
favorite of the sultan, and took so judicious a course that his embassy
ended by rendering France mistress of the commerce of the Mediterranean,
and giving her a pre-eminence in the East which she has never lost.
It was after his return from the Levant that, in an interview with Henry
III., the sagacious bishop urged the king to declare war against Spain,
as the best means of delivering France from the horrors of a civil war.
De Thou says the king seemed to listen favorably to the suggestion; but
it was opposed by the council, and it was not till ten years later that
Henry IV. declared war against that country, as Duruy states, “the better
to end the civil war.”
The Bishop of Dax seems to have been poorly remunerated for his eminent
services. Like Frederick the Great’s father, he said kings were always
hard of hearing when there was a question of money, and complained
that, notwithstanding his long services abroad, he had never received
either honors or profit. Even his appointments as ambassador to Venice,
amounting to more than thirty thousand livres, were still due. Many of
his letters to the king and to Marie de Médicis have been preserved,
which show his elevation of mind, and his broad political and religious
views, which give him a right to be numbered among the great churchmen of
the XVIth century.
At Dax we took a carriage to the _Berceau_ of S. Vincent, and, after
half an hour’s drive along a level road bordered with trees, we came
in sight of the great dome of the church rising up amid a group of fine
buildings. Driving up to the door, the first thing we observed was the
benign statue of the saint standing on the gable against the clear, blue
sky, with arms wide-spread, smiling on the pilgrim a very balm of peace.
Before the church there is a broad green, at the right of which is the
venerable old oak; at the left, the cottage of the De Pauls; and in the
rear of the church, the asylums and hospice--fine establishments one is
surprised to find in this remote region. We at once entered the church,
which is in the style of the Renaissance. It consists of a nave without
aisles, a circular apsis, and transepts which form the arms of the cross,
in the centre of which rises the dome, lined with an indifferent fresco
representing S. Vincent borne to heaven by the angels. Directly beneath
is the high altar where are enshrined relics of the saint. Around it,
at the four angles of the cross, are statues of four S. Vincents--of
Xaintes, of Saragossa, of Lerins, and S. Vincent Ferrer. The whole life
of S. Vincent of Paul is depicted in the stained-glass windows. And on
the walls of the nave are four paintings, one representing him as a boy,
praying before Our Lady of Buglose; the second, his first Mass in the
chapel of Notre Dame de Grâce; in the third he is redeeming captives, and
in the fourth giving alms to the poor.
We next visited the asylums, admiring the clean, airy rooms, the
intelligent, happy faces of the orphans, and the graceful cordiality of
the sister who was at the head of the establishment--a lady of fortune
who has devoted her all to the work.
At length we came to the cottage--the door of the true hero to which
our path had led. The broad, one-story house in which S. Vincent was
born is now a mere skeleton within, the framework of the partitions
alone remaining, so one can take in the whole at a glance. There is the
kitchen, with the huge, old-fashioned chimney, around which the family
used to gather--so enormous that in looking up one sees a vast extent of
blue sky. Saint’s house though it was, we could not help thinking--Heaven
forgive us the profane thought!--it must have been very much like the
squire’s chimney in _Tylney Hall_, the draught of which, like the Polish
game of draughts, was apt to take backwards and discharge all the smoke
into his sitting-room! The second room at the left, where the saint was
born, is an oratory containing an altar, the crucifix he used to pray
before, some of the garments he wore, shoes broad and much-enduring as
his own nature, and many other precious relics. Not only this, but every
room has an altar. We counted seven, all of the simplest construction,
for the convenience of the pilgrims who come here with their _curés_ at
certain seasons of the year to honor their sainted countryman who in his
youth here led a simple, laborious life like themselves. We found several
persons at prayer in the various compartments, all of which showed the
primitive habits and limited resources of the family, though not absolute
poverty. The floor was of earth, the walls and great rafters only
polished with time and the kisses of the pilgrims, and above the rude
stairway, a mere loft where perchance the saint slept in his boyhood.
Everything in this cottage, where a great heart was cradled, was from its
very simplicity extremely touching. It seemed the very place to meditate
on the mysterious ways of divine Providence--mysterious as the wind that
bloweth where it listeth--the very place to chant the _Suscitans à terrâ
inopem: et de stercore erigens pauperem; ut collocet eum cum principibus,
cum principibus populi sui_.
S. Vincent’s oak, on the opposite side of the green, looks old enough to
have witnessed the mysterious rites of the Druids. It is surrounded by
a railing to protect it from the pious depredations of the pilgrim. It
still spreads broad its branches covered with verdure, though the trunk
is so hollowed by decay that one side is entirely gone, and in the heart,
where young Vincent used to pray, stands a wooden pillar on which is a
statue of the Virgin, pure and white, beneath the green bower. A crowd of
artists, _savants_, soldiers, and princes have bent before this venerable
tree. In 1823 the public authorities of the commune received the Duchess
of Angoulême at its foot. The learned and pious Ozanam, one of the
founders of the Society of S. Vincent of Paul, came here in his last days
to offer a prayer. On the list of foreign visitors is the name of the
late venerable Bishop Flaget of Kentucky, of whom it is recorded that he
kissed the tree with love and veneration, and plucked, as every pilgrim
does, a leaf from its branches.
There is an herb, says Pliny, found on Mt. Atlas; they who gather it see
more clearly. There is something of this virtue in the oak of S. Vincent
of Paul. One sees more clearly than ever at its foot the infinite moral
superiority of a nature like his to the worldly ambition of the old lords
of the Landes. Famous as the latter were in their day, who thinks of them
now? Who cares for the lords of Castelnau, the Seigneurs of Juliac, or
even for the Sires of Albret, whose ancient castle at Labrit is now razed
to the ground, and, while we write, its last traces obliterated for ever?
The shepherd whistles idly among the ruins of their once strong holds,
the ploughman drives thoughtlessly over the place where they once held
proud sway, as indifferent as the beasts themselves; but there is not a
peasant in the Landes who does not cherish the memory of S. Vincent of
Paul, or a noble who does not respect his name; and thousands annually
visit the poor house where he was born and look with veneration at the
oak where he prayed.
Charity is the great means of making the poor forget the fearful
inequality of worldly riches, and its obligation reminds the wealthy they
are only part of a great brotherhood. Its exercise softens the heart and
averts the woe pronounced on the rich. S. John of God, wishing to found
a hospital at Granada, and without a ducat in the world, walked slowly
through the streets and squares with a hod on his back and two great
kettles at his side, crying with a loud voice: “Who wishes to do good to
himself? Ah! my brethren, for the love of God, do good to yourselves!”
And alms flowed in from every side. It was these appeals in the divine
name that gave him his appellation. “What is your name?” asked Don
Ramirez, Bishop of Tuy. “John,” was the reply. “Henceforth you shall be
called John of God,” said the bishop.
And so, that we may all become the sons of God, let us here, at the foot
of S. Vincent’s oak, echo the words that in life were so often on his
lips:
CARITATEM, PROPTER DEUM!
LORD CASTLEHAVEN’S MEMOIRS.[6]
In the year 1638 the Earl of Castlehaven, then a young man, made the
Grand Tour, as became a nobleman of his family in that age. Being at
Rome, whither the duty of paying his respects to the Holy Father had
carried him--for this lord was the head of one of those grand old
families which had declined to forswear its faith at the behest of Henry
or Elizabeth--he received a letter from King Charles I., requiring him to
attend the king in his expedition against the Scots, then revolted and
in arms. With that instant loyalty which was the return made by those
proscribed families to an ungrateful court from the Armada down, Lord
Castlehaven, two days after the messenger had placed the royal missive
in his hands, took post for England. Near Turin he fell in with an army
commanded by the Marquis de Leganes, Governor of Milan for the King of
Spain, who was marching to besiege the Savoy capital. But the siege was
soon raised, and Lord Castlehaven entered the town. There he found her
Royal Highness the Duchess of Savoy in great confusion, as if she had got
no rest for many nights, so much had she been occupied with the conduct
of the defence; for even the wives of this warlike and rapacious family
soon learned to defend their own by the strong hand, and could stretch it
out to grasp still more when occasion served. But as yet the ambition of
the House of Savoy stopped short of sacrilege--or stooped to it like a
hawk on short flights--nor dreamed of aggrandizing itself with the spoils
of the whole territory of the church. When Lord Castlehaven came to
take leave of the duchess, her royal highness gave him a musket-bullet,
much battered, which had come in at her window and missed her narrowly,
charging him to deliver it safely to her sister, the Queen of England--as
it proved, a present of ill omen; for of musket-balls, in a little time,
the English sister had more than enough.
Arriving in London, Lord Castlehaven followed the king to Berwick,
where he found the royal army encamped, with the Tweed before it, and
the Scotch, under Gen. Leslie, lying at some distance. A pacification
was soon effected, and both armies partially disbanded. After this the
earl passed his time “as well as he could” at home till 1640. In that
year the King of France besieged Arras, and Lord Castlehaven set out to
witness the siege. Within was a stout garrison under Owen Roe O’Neal,
commanding for the Prince Cardinal, Governor of the Low Countries. This
was the first meeting of Castlehaven with the future victor of Benburb,
with whom he was afterwards brought into closer relations in the Irish
Rebellion. The French pressed Arras close, and the confederates being
defeated, and the hope of the siege being raised grown desperate,
the town was surrendered on honorable terms. This action over, Lord
Castlehaven returned to England and sat in Parliament till the attainder
of the Earl of Strafford. When that great nobleman fell, deserted by
his wavering royal master, and the king’s friends were beginning to
turn about--they scarce knew whither--to prepare for the storm that all
men saw was coming, Lord Castlehaven went to Ireland, where he had some
estate and three married sisters. While there the Rebellion of 1641 broke
out. Although innocent of any complicity in the outbreak, his faith
made him suspected, and he was imprisoned on a slight pretext by the
lords-justices. Escaping, his first design was to get into France, and
thence to England to join the king at York, and petition for a trial by
his peers. But coming to Kilkenny, he found there the Supreme Council
of the Confederate Catholics just assembled--many of them being of his
acquaintance--and was persuaded by them to throw in his lot with theirs,
seeing, as they truly told him, that they were all persecuted on the same
score, and ruined so that they had nothing more to lose but their lives.
From that time till the peace of 1646 he was engaged in the war of the
Confederate Catholics, holding important commands in the field under the
Supreme Council. His _Memoirs_ is the history of this war.
After the peace of 1646, concluded with the Marquis of Ormond, the king’s
lord-lieutenant, but which shortly fell through, Lord Castlehaven retired
to France, and served as a volunteer under Prince Rupert at the siege of
Landrecies. Then, returning to Paris, he remained in attendance on the
Queen of England and the Prince of Wales (Charles II.) at St. Germain
till 1648. In that year he returned to Ireland with the lord-lieutenant,
the Marquis of Ormond, and served the royal cause in that kingdom
against the parliamentary forces under Ireton and Cromwell. The battle
of Worcester being lost, and Cromwell the undisputed master of the three
kingdoms, Castlehaven again followed the clouded fortunes of Charles II.
to France. There he obtained permission to join the Great Condé. In the
campaigns under that prince he had the command of eight or nine regiments
of Irish troops, making altogether a force of 5,000 men. Thus we find
the Irish refugees already consolidated into a brigade some years before
the Treaty of Limerick expatriated those soldiers whose valor is more
commonly identified with that title.
Lord Castlehaven returned to England at the Restoration. In the war
with Holland he served as a volunteer in some of the naval engagements.
In 1667, the French having invaded Flanders, he was ordered there with
2,400 men to recruit the “Old English Regiment,” of which he was made
colonel. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ended this war. Peace reigned in
the Low Countries till the breaking out, in 1673, of the long and bloody
contest between the Prince of Orange and the confederate Spaniards and
Imperialists on the one side, and Louis XIV. on the other. This was
the age of grand campaigns, conducted upon principles of mathematical
precision by the great captains formed in the school of M. Turenne,
before the “little Marquis of Brandenburg”[7] and the “Corsican
corporal” in turn revolutionized the art of war. Castlehaven entered
the Spanish service, and shared the checkered but generally disastrous
fortunes of the Duke of Villahermosa and the Prince of Orange (William
III.) against Condé and Luxembourg, till the peace of Nymegen put an end
to the war in 1678.
Then, after forty years’ hard service, this veteran retired from the
field, and returning to England, like another Cæsar, set about writing
his commentaries on the wars. Thus he spent his remaining years. First
he published, but without acknowledging the authorship, his _Memoirs
of the Irish Wars_. This first edition was suppressed. Then, in 1684,
appeared the second edition, containing, besides the _Memoirs_,
his “Appendix”--being an account of his Continental service--his
“Observations” on confederate armies and the conduct of war, and a
“Postscript,” which is a reply to the Earl of Anglesey. And right well
has the modern reader reason to be thankful for his lordship’s literary
spirit. His _Memoirs_ is one of the most authentic and trustworthy
accounts we have of that vexed passage of Irish history--the Rebellion
of 1641. Its blunt frankness is its greatest charm; it has the value of
an account by an actor in the scenes described; and it possesses that
merit of impartiality which comes of being written by an Englishman
who, connected with the Irish leaders by the ties of faith, family, and
property, and sympathizing fully with their efforts to obtain redress
for flagrant wrongs was yet not blind to their mistakes and indefensible
actions.
Castlehaven, neglected for more than a century, has received more
justice at the hands of later historians. He is frequently referred to by
Lingard, and his work will be found an admirable commentary on Carte’s
_Life of Ormond_. There is a notice of him in Horace Walpole’s _Catalogue
of Royal and Noble Authors_ (vol. iii.)
“If this lord,” says Walpole, “who led a very martial life, had not
taken the pains to record his own actions (which, however, he has done
with great frankness and ingenuity), we should know little of his
story, our historians scarce mentioning him, and even our writers of
anecdotes, as Burnet, or of tales and circumstances, as Roger North,
not giving any account of a court quarrel occasioned by his lordship’s
_Memoirs_. Anthony Wood alone has preserved this event, but has not
made it intelligible. … The earl had been much censured for his share
in the Irish Rebellion, and wrote the _Memoirs_ to explain his conduct
rather than to excuse it; for he freely confesses his faults, and imputes
them to provocations from the government of that kingdom, to whose
rashness and cruelty, conjointly with the votes and resolutions of the
English Parliament, he ascribes the massacre. There are no dates nor
method, and less style, in these _Memoirs_--defects atoned for in some
measure by a martial honesty. Soon after their publication the Earl of
Anglesey wrote to ask a copy. Lord Castlehaven sent him one, but denying
the work as his. Anglesey, who had been a commissioner in Ireland for
the Parliament, published Castlehaven’s letter, with observations and
reflections very abusive of the Duke of Ormond, which occasioned first
a printed controversy, and this a trial before the Privy Council; the
event of which was that Anglesey’s first letter was voted a scandalous
libel, and himself removed from the custody of the Privy Seal; and that
the Earl of Castlehaven’s _Memoirs_, on which he was several times
examined, and which he owned, was declared a scandalous libel on the
government--a censure that seems very little founded; there is not a word
that can authorize that sentence from the Council of Charles II. but
the imputation on the lords-justices of Charles I.; for I suppose the
Privy Council did not pique themselves on vindicating the honor of the
republican Parliament! Bishop Morley wrote _A True Account of the Whole
Proceeding between James, Duke of Ormond, and Arthur, Earl of Anglesey_.”
Immediately after the Restoration, as it is well known, an act was
passed, commonly called in that age “the Act of Oblivion,” by which all
penalties (except certain specified ones) incurred in the late troublous
and rebellious times were forgiven. So superfine would have been the net
which the law of treason would have drawn around the three kingdoms, had
its strict construction been enforced, that it was quite cut loose, a few
only of the greatest criminals and regicides being held in its meshes.
So harsh had been Cromwell’s iron rule that there were few counties of
England in which the stoutest squires, and even the most loyal, might
not have trembled had the king’s commission inquired too closely into
the legal question of connivance at the late tyrant’s rule. And in the
great cities, London especially, the tide of enthusiasm which now ran
so strongly for the king could not hide the memory of those days when
the same fierce crowds had clamored for the head of the “royal martyr.”
Prudent it was, as well as benign, therefore, for the “merry monarch”
to let time roll smoothly over past transgressions. But though the law
might grant oblivion, and even punish the revival of controversies,
the old rancor between individuals and even parties was not so easily
appeased after the first joyful outburst. Books and pamphlets by the
hundred brought charges and counter charges. But these “authors of
slander and lyes,” as Castlehaven calls them, outdid themselves in their
tragical stories of the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Nor have imitators been
wanting in this age, as rancorous and more skilful, in the production
of “fictions and invectives to traduce a whole nation.” To answer those
calumnies by “setting forth the truth of his story in a brief and plain
method” was the design of Castlehaven’s work.
Then, as now, it was the aim of the libellers of the Irish people to
make the whole nation accountable for the “massacre,” so called, of
1641, and to confound the war of the Confederate Catholics and the
later loyal resistance to Cromwell in one common denunciation with the
first sanguinary and criminal outbreak. Lord Castlehaven’s narrative
effectually disposes of this charge. In a singularly clear and candid
manner he narrates the rise and progress of the insurrection, and
shows the wide difference between the aims and motives of those who
planned the uprising of October 23, 1641, and of those who afterwards
carried on the war under the title of the Confederate Catholics of
Ireland. The former he does not hesitate to denounce as a “barbarous
and inhumane” conspiracy, but the responsibility for it he fixes in the
right quarter--the malevolent character of the Irish government and the
atrocious spirit of the English Puritan Parliament, which, abandoning all
the duties of protection, kept only one object in view--the extirpation
of the native Irish.
With the successful example of the Scotch Rebellion immediately before
them, it was a matter of little wonder to observant and impartial minds
in that age that the Irish should have seized upon the occasion of the
growing quarrel between the king and Parliament as the opportune moment
for the redress of their grievances. For in the year 1640, two years
after the pacification of Berwick, the Scotch Rebellion, primarily
instigated by the same cause as the Irish--religious differences--broke
out with greater violence than ever. The Scots’ army invaded England,
defeated the king’s troops at Newburn, and took Newcastle. Then,
driven to extremity by those Scotch rebels, as mercenary as they
were fanatical,[8] and his strength paralyzed by the growing English
sedition, Charles I. called together “that unfortunate Parliament” which,
proceeding from one violence to another, first destroyed its master,
and then was in turn destroyed by its own servant. Far from voting the
Scotch army rebels and traitors, the Parliament at once styled them “dear
brethren” and voted them £300,000 for their kindness. Mr. Gervase Holles
was expelled from the House for saying in the course of debate “that the
best way of paying them was by arms to expel them out of the kingdom.”
The quarrel between King and Commons grew hotter, until finally it became
evident that, notwithstanding Charles’ concessions, a violent rupture
could not be long delayed.
No fairer opportunity could be hoped for by the Irish leaders,
dissatisfied with their own condition, and spurred on by the hope of
winning as good measure of success as the Scotch. The plan to surprise
the Castle of Dublin and the other English garrisons was quickly matured;
but failing, some of the conspirators were taken and executed, and the
rest forced to retire to the woods and mountains. But the flame thus
lighted soon spread over the whole kingdom, and occasioned a war which
lasted without intermission for ten years.
The following reasons are declared by Castlehaven to have been afterwards
offered to him by the Irish as the explanation of this insurrection:
First, that, being constantly looked upon by the English government as
a conquered nation, and never treated as natural or free-born subjects,
they considered themselves entitled to regain their liberty whenever they
believed it to be in their power to do so.
Secondly, that in the North, where the insurrection broke out with the
greatest violence, six whole counties had been escheated to the crown at
one blow, on account of Tyrone’s rebellion; and although it was shown
that a large portion of the population of those counties was innocent of
complicity in that rising, nothing had ever been restored, but the whole
bestowed by James I. upon his countrymen. To us, who live at the distance
of two centuries and a half from those days of wholesale rapine, these
confiscations still seem the most gigantic instance of English wrong;
but who shall tell their maddening effect upon those who suffered from
them in person in that age--the men flying to the mountains, the women
perishing in the fields, the children crying for food they could not get?
Thirdly, the popular alarm was heightened by the reports, current during
Strafford’s government in Ireland, that the counties of Roscommon, Mayo,
Galway, and Cork, and parts of Tipperary, Limerick, and Wicklow, were to
share the fate of the Ulster counties. It hardly needs the example of our
own Revolution to prove the truth of Castlehaven’s observation upon this
project: “That experience tells us where the people’s property is like
to be invaded, neither religion nor loyalty is able to keep them within
bounds if they find themselves in a condition to make any considerable
opposition.” And this brings to his mind the story related by Livy of
those resolute ambassadors of the Privernates, who, being reduced to such
extremities that they were obliged to beg peace of the Roman Senate, yet,
being asked what peace should the Romans expect from them, who had broken
it so often, they boldly answered--which made the Senate accept their
proposals--“If a good one, it shall be faithful and lasting; but if bad,
it shall not hold very long. For think not,” said they, “that any people,
or even any man, will continue in that condition whereof they are weary
any longer than of necessity they must.”
Fourthly, it was notorious that from the moment Parliament was convened
it had urged the greatest severities against the English Roman Catholics.
The king was compelled to revive the penalties of the worst days of
Edward and Elizabeth against them. His own consort was scarce safe from
the violence of those hideous wretches who concealed the vilest crimes
under the garb of Puritan godliness. Readers even of such a common and
one-sided book as Forster’s _Life of Sir John Eliot_ will be surprised
to find the prominence and space the “Popish” resolutions and debates
occupied in the sittings of Parliament. The popular leaders divided their
time nearly equally between the persecution of the Catholics and assaults
upon the prerogative. The same severities were now threatened against the
Irish Catholics. “Both Houses,” says Castlehaven, “solicited, by several
petitions out of Ireland, to have those of that kingdom treated with the
like rigor, which, to a people so fond of their religion as the Irish,
was no small inducement to make them, while there was an opportunity
offered, to stand upon their guard.”
Fifthly, the precedent of the Scotch Rebellion, and its successful
results--pecuniarily, politically, and religiously--encouraged the
Irish so much at that time that they offered it to Owen O’Conally as
their chief motive for rising in rebellion; “which,” says he (quoted by
Castlehaven), “they engaged in to be rid of the tyrannical government
that was over them, and to imitate Scotland, who by that course had
enlarged their privileges” (O’Conally’s _Exam._, October 22, 1641;
Borlace’s _History of the Irish Rebellion_, p. 21).
To the same purpose Lord Castlehaven quotes Mr. Howell in his _Mercurius
Hibernicus_ in the year 1643; “whose words, because an impartial author
and a known Protestant, I will here transcribe in confirmation of what I
have said and for the reader’s further satisfaction”:
“Moreover,” says Mr. Howell, “they [the Irish] entered into
consideration that they had sundry grievances and grounds of
complaint, both touching their estates and consciences, which
they pretended to be far greater than those of the Scots. For
they fell to think that if the Scot was suffered to introduce
a new religion, it was reason they should not be punished in
the exercise of their old, which they glory never to have
altered; and for temporal matters, wherein the Scot had no
grievance at all to speak of, the new plantations which had
been lately afoot to be made in Connaught and other places; the
concealed lands and defective titles which were daily found
out; the new customs which were enforced; and the incapacity
they had to any preferment or office in church or state, with
other things, they considered to be grievances of a far greater
nature, and that deserved redress much more than any the Scot
had. To this end they sent over commissioners to attend this
Parliament in England with certain propositions; but they were
dismissed hence with a short and unsavory answer, which bred
worse blood in the nation than was formerly gathered. And this,
with that leading case of the Scot, may be said to be the first
incitements that made them rise.… Lastly, that army of 8,000
men which the Earl of Strafford had raised to be transported
into England for suppressing the Scot, being by the advice of
our Parliament here disbanded, the country was annoyed by some
of those straggling soldiers. Therefore the ambassadors from
Spain having propounded to have some numbers of those disbanded
soldiers for the service of their master, his majesty, by the
mature advice of his Privy Council, to occur the mischiefs
that might arise to his kingdom of Ireland from those loose
cashiered soldiers, yielded to the ambassadors’ motion. But as
they were in the height of that work (providing transports),
there was a sudden stop made of those promised troops; and this
was the last, though not the least, fatal cause of that horrid
insurrection.
“Out of these premises it is easy for any common understanding,
not transported with passion or private interest, to draw
this conclusion: That they who complied with the Scot in his
insurrection; they who dismissed the Irish commissioners with
such a short, impolitic answer; they who took off the Earl of
Strafford’s head, and afterwards delayed the despatching of the
Earl of Leicester; they who hindered those disbanded troops in
Ireland to go for Spain, may be justly said to have been the
true causes of the late insurrection of the Irish.
“Thus,” continues Castlehaven, “concludes this learned and ingenious
gentleman, who, as being then his majesty’s historiographer, was as
likely as any man to know the transactions of those times, and, as an
Englishman and a loyal Protestant, was beyond all exception of partiality
or favor of the Papists of Ireland, and therefore could have no other
reason but the love of truth and justice to give this account of the
Irish Rebellion, or make the Scotch and their wicked brethren in the
Parliament of England the main occasion of that horrid insurrection.”
As for the “massacre,” so called, that ensued, Lord Castlehaven speaks
of it with the abhorrence it deserves. But this very term “massacre” is
a misnomer plausibly affixed to the uprising by English ingenuity. In a
country such as Ireland then was--in which, though nominally conquered,
few English lived outside the walled towns--an intermittent state of
war was chronic; and therefore there was none of that unpreparedness
for attack or absence of means of defence on the part of the English
settlers which, in other well-known historical cases, has rightfully
given the name of “massacre” to a premeditated murderous attack upon
defenceless and surprised victims. To hold the English as such will be
regarded with contemptuous ridicule by every one acquainted with the
system of English and Scotch colonization in Ireland in that age. The
truth is, the cruelties on both sides were very bloody, “and though
some,” says Lord Castlehaven, “will throw all upon the Irish, yet ’tis
well known who they were that used to give orders to their parties sent
into the enemies’ quarters to spare neither man, woman, nor child.”
And as to the preposterous muster-rolls of Sir John Temple--from whom
the subsequent scribblers borrowed all their catalogues--giving _fifty
thousand (!)_ British natives as the number killed, Lord Castlehaven’s
testimony is to the effect that there was not one-tenth--or scarcely
five thousand--of that number of British natives then living in Ireland
outside of the cities and walled towns where no “massacre” was committed.
Lord Castlehaven also shows that there were not 50,000 persons to be
found even in Temple’s catalogue, although it was then a matter of common
notoriety that he repeats the same people and the same circumstances
twice or thrice, and mentions hundreds as then murdered who lived many
years afterwards. Some of Temple’s, not the Irish, victims were alive
when Castlehaven wrote.
But the true test of the character of this insurrection is to be found,
not in the exaggerated calumnies of English libellers writing after the
event, but in the testimony of the English settlers themselves when in a
position where lies would have been of no avail. We will therefore give
here, though somewhat out of the course of our narrative, an incident
related by Castlehaven to that effect.
Shortly after he had been appointed General of the Horse under Preston,
Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate Catholics in Leinster, that general
took, among other places, Birr, in King’s County. Here Castlehaven
had the good fortune, as he says, to begin his command with an act of
charity. For, going to see this garrison before it marched out, he came
into a large room where he found many people of quality, both men and
women. They no sooner saw him but, with tears in their eyes, they fell
on their knees, desiring him to save their lives. “I was astonished,”
says Castlehaven, “at their posture and petition, and, having made them
rise, asked what the matter was? They answered that from the first day of
the war there had been continued action and bloodshed between them and
their Irish neighbors, and little quarter on either side; and therefore,
understanding that I was an Englishman, begged I would take them into
my protection.” It is enough to say that Lord Castlehaven, with some
difficulty, and by personally taking command of a strong convoy, obtained
for them the protection they prayed for from the exasperated and outraged
population around them. But what we wish to point out is this: that here
are those victims of Sir John Temple’s “massacre”--not the garrison of
the fort, observe, but the English settlers driven in by the approach of
Preston’s army, after terrorizing the country for months--now, with the
fear of death before them, confessing on their knees that from the first
day of the war they had arms in their hands, and that little quarter was
given on either side!
How well the English were able to take care of themselves at this time,
and what _their_ “massacres” were like, are shown by the following
extract from a letter of Colonel the Hon. Mervin Touchett to his brother,
Lord Castlehaven. Col. Touchett is describing a raid made by Sir Arthur
Loffens, Governor of Naas, with a party of horse and dragoons, killing
such of the Irish as they met, to punish an attack upon an English party
a few days before: “But the most considerable slaughter was in a great
strength of furze, scattered on a hill, where the people of several
villages (taking the alarm) had sheltered themselves. Now, Sir Arthur,
having invested the hill, set the furze on fire on all sides, where the
people, being a considerable number, were all burned or killed, men,
women, and children. I saw the bodies and the furze still burning.”
We remember the horror-stricken denunciations of the English press some
years ago when it was stated, without much authentication, that some of
the French commanders in the Algerine campaigns had smoked some Arabs to
death in caves. But it would seem from Col. Touchett’s narrative that
the English troopers would have been able to give their French comrades
lessons in the culinary art of war some centuries ago. A grilled Irishman
is surely as savory an object for the contemplation of humanity as a
smoked Arab!
But whatever the atrocities on the English side, we will not say that
the cruelties committed by the Irish were not deserving of man’s
reprobation and God’s anger. Only this is to be observed: that whereas
the “massacres” by the Irish were confined to the rabble and Strafford’s
disbanded soldiers, those committed by the English side were shared in,
as the narratives of the day show, by the persons highest in position
and authority. They made part of the English system of government of
that day. On the other hand, the leading men of the Irish Catholic body
not only endeavored to stay those murders, but sought to induce the
government to bring the authors of them on both sides to punishment. But
in vain! On the 17th of March, 1642, Viscount Gormanstown and Sir Robert
Talbot, on behalf of the nobility and gentry of the nation, presented a
remonstrance, praying “that the murders on both sides committed should
be strictly examined, and the authors of them punished according to
the utmost severity of the law.” Which proposal, Castlehaven shrewdly
remarks, would never have been rejected by their adversaries, “but that
they were conscious of being deeper in the mire than they would have the
world believe.”
So far the “massacre” and first uprising.
Now, as to the inception of the war of the Confederate Catholics, and its
objects, Lord Castlehaven’s narrative is equally convincing and clear.
Parliament met in the Castle of Dublin, Nov. 16, 1641. The Rebellion
was laid before both Houses by the lords-justices, Sir William Parsons
and Sir John Borlace. Concurrent resolutions were adopted, without a
dissenting voice, by the two Houses, declaring their abhorrence of
the Rebellion, and pledging their lives and fortunes to suppress it.
Castlehaven had a seat in the Irish House of Lords as an Irish peer,
and being then in Ireland, as before related, took his seat at the
meeting of Parliament. Besides Castlehaven, most of the leaders of
the war that ensued were members of the Irish House of Lords. These
Catholic peers were not less earnest than the rest in their unanimous
intention to put down the Rebellion. Both Houses thereupon began to
deliberate upon the most effectual means for its suppression. “But this
way of proceeding,” says Castlehaven, “did not, it seems, square with
the lords-justices’ designs, who were often heard to say that ‘the
more were in rebellion, the more lands should be forfeit to them.’”
Therefore, in the midst of the deliberations of Parliament on the
subject, a prorogation was determined on. The lords, understanding this,
sent Castlehaven and Viscount Castelloe to join a deputation from the
commons to the lords-justices, praying them not to prorogue, at least
till the rebels--then few in number--were reduced to obedience. But the
address was slighted, and Parliament prorogued the next day, to the great
surprise of both Houses and the “general dislike,” says Castlehaven, “of
all honest and knowing men.”
The result was, as the lords-justices no doubt intended, that the
rebels were greatly encouraged, and at once began to show themselves in
quarters hitherto peaceful. The members of Parliament retired to their
country-houses in much anxiety after the prorogation. Lord Castlehaven
went to his seat at Maddingstown. There he received a letter, signed by
the Viscounts of Gormanstown and Netterville, and by the Barons of Slane,
Lowth, and Dunsany, containing an enclosure to the lords-justices which
those noblemen desired him to forward to them, and, if possible, obtain
an answer. This letter to the lords-justices, Castlehaven says, was very
humble and submissive, asking only permission to send their petitions
into England to represent their grievances to the king. The only reply
of the lords-justices was a warning to Castlehaven to receive no more
letters from them.
Meanwhile, parties were sent out from Dublin and the various garrisons
throughout the kingdom to “kill and destroy the rebels.” But those
parties took little pains to distinguish rebels from loyal subjects,
provided they were only Catholics, killing promiscuously men, women, and
children. Reprisals followed on the part of the rebels. The nobility and
gentry were between two fires. A contribution was levied upon them by the
rebels, after the manner of the Scots in the North of England in 1640.
But although to pay that contribution in England passed without reproach,
in Ireland it was denounced by the lords-justices as treason. The English
troopers insulted and openly threatened the most distinguished Irish
families as favorers of the Rebellion. “This,” says Castlehaven, “and
the sight of their tenants, the harmless country people, without respect
to age or sex, thus barbarously murdered, made the Catholic nobility and
gentry at last resolved to stand upon their guard.” Nevertheless, before
openly raising the standard of revolt against the Irish government,
which refused to protect them, they made several efforts to get their
petitions before Charles I. Sir John Read, a Scotchman, then going to
England, undertook to forward petitions to the king; but, being arrested
on suspicion at Drogheda, was taken to Dublin, and there put upon the
rack by the lords-justices to endeavor to wring from him a confession of
Charles I.’s complicity in the Rebellion. This Col. Mervin Touchett heard
from Sir John Read himself as he was brought out of the room where he was
racked. But that unfortunate monarch knew not how to choose his friends
or to be faithful to them when he found them. He referred the whole
conduct of Irish affairs to the English Parliament, thus increasing
the discontent to the last pitch by making it plain to the whole Irish
people that he abandoned the duty of protecting them, and had handed them
over to the mercy of their worst enemies--the English Parliament. That
Parliament at once passed a succession of wild votes and ordinances,
indicating their intention of stopping short at nothing less than utter
extirpation of the native race. Dec. 8, 1641, they declared they would
never give consent to any toleration of the Popish religion in Ireland.
In February following, when few of any estate were as yet engaged in
the Rebellion, they passed an act assigning two million five hundred
thousand acres of cultivated land, besides immense tracts of bogs, woods,
and mountains, to English and Scotch adventurers for a small proportion
of money on the grant. This money, the act stated, was to go to the
reduction of the rebels; but, with a fine irony of providence upon the
king’s weak compliance, every penny of it was afterwards used to raise
armies by the English rebels against him. “But the greatest discontent
of all,” says Castlehaven, “was about the lords-justices proroguing
the Parliament--the only way the nation had to express its loyalty and
prevent their being misrepresented to their sovereign, which, had it
been permitted to sit for any reasonable time, would in all likelihood,
without any great charge or trouble, have brought the rebels to justice.”
Thus all hopes of redress or safety being at an end--a villanous
government in Dublin intent only upon confiscation, a furious Parliament
in London breathing vengeance against the whole Irish race, and a king
so embroiled in his English quarrels that he could do nothing to help
his Irish subjects, even had he wished it--what was left those loyal,
gallant, and devoted men but to draw the sword for their own safety?
The Rebellion by degrees spread over the whole kingdom. “And now,”
says Castlehaven, “there’s no more looking back; for all were in arms
and full of indignation.” A council of the leading Catholic nobles,
military officers, and gentry met at Kilkenny, and formed themselves
into an association under the title of the Confederate Catholics of
Ireland. Four generals were appointed for the respective provinces of the
kingdom--Preston for Leinster, Barry for Munster, Owen Roe O’Neale for
Ulster, and Burke for Connaught. Thus war was declared.
When the Rebellion first broke out in the North, Lord Castlehaven
had immediately repaired to Dublin and offered his services to the
lords-justices. They were declined with the reply that “his religion
was an obstacle.” After the prorogation of Parliament, as we have seen,
he retired to his house in the country. Then, coming again to Dublin to
meet a charge of corresponding with the rebels which had been brought
against him, he was arrested by order of the lords-justices, and, after
twenty weeks of imprisonment in the sheriff’s house, was committed to the
Castle. “This startled me a little,” says Castlehaven--as it well might
do; for the state prisoner’s exit from the Castle in Dublin in those days
was usually made in the same way as from the Tower in London, namely, by
the block--“and brought into my thoughts the proceedings against the Earl
of Strafford, who, confiding in his own innocence, was voted out of his
life by an unprecedented bill of attainder.” Therefore, hearing nothing
while in prison but rejoicings at the king’s misfortunes, who at last
had been forced to take up arms by the English rebels, and knowing the
lords-justices to be of the Parliament faction, and the lord-lieutenant,
the Marquis of Ormond, being desperately sick of a fever, not without
suspicion of poison, and his petition to be sent to England, to be tried
there by his peers, being refused, he determined to make his escape,
shrewdly concluding, as he says, that “innocence was a scurvy plea in an
angry time.”
Arriving at Kilkenny, he joined the confederacy, as has been related.
From this time the war of the Confederate Catholics was carried on with
varying success until the cessation of 1646, and then until the peace of
1648, when the Confederates united, but too late, with the Marquis of
Ormond to stop the march of Cromwell.
A SWEET SINGER: ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER.
She sang of Love--the love whose fires
Burn with a pure and gentle flame,
No passion lights of wild desires
Red with the lurid glow of shame.
She sang of angels, and their wings
Seemed rustling through each soft refrain;
Gladness and sorrow, kindred things
She wove in many a tender strain.
She sang of Heaven and of God,
Of Bethlehem’s star and Calvary’s way,
Gethsemane--the bloody sod,
Death, darkness, resurrection-day.
She sang of Mary--Mother blest,
Her sweetest carols were of thee!
Close folded to thy loving breast
How fair her home in heaven must be!
THE COLPORTEURS OF BONN.
I was very stupid in my youth, and am still far from being sharp. I could
not master knotty questions like other boys; so this natural deficiency
had to be supplemented by some plan that would facilitate the acquisition
of knowledge. The advantage to be derived from a garrulous preceptor,
whose mind was stored with all sorts of learning without dogmatism or
hard formularies, were fully appreciated by my parents. John O’Neil was
a very old man when I was a boy, and he was just the person qualified
to impart an astonishing quantity of all sorts of facts, and perhaps
fancies. I hold him in affectionate remembrance though he be dead over
twenty-five years, and rests near the remains of his favorite hero,
O’Connell, in Glasnevin Cemetery. When he became the chief architect of
my intellectual structure, I thought him the most learned man in the
world. On account of my dulness, he adopted the method of sermonizing
to me instead of giving me unintelligible lessons to be learned out of
books. I took a great fancy to him, because I found him exceedingly
interesting, and he evinced a strong liking for me because I was docile.
We became inseparable companions, notwithstanding the great discrepancy
in our years. His tall, erect, lank figure and lantern jaw were to me the
physiological signs of profundity, firmness, and power, and his white
head was the symbol of wisdom. Our tastes--well, I had no tastes save
such as he chose to awaken in me, and hence there came to be very soon
a great similitude in our respective inclinations. I was like a ball of
wax, a sheet of paper, or any other original impressionable thing you
may name, in his hands for ten years, after which very probably I began
to harden, though I was not conscious of the process. However, the large
fund of knowledge that he imparted to me crystallized, as it were, and
became fixed in my possession as firmly as if it had been elaborately
achieved by a severe mental training. After I went to college he was
still my friend, and rejoiced in my subsequent successes, and followed me
with a jealous eye and a sort of parental anxiety in my foreign travels,
and even in death he did not forget me, for he made me the custodian of
his great heaps of literary productions, all in manuscript, embracing
sketches, diaries, notes of travel, learned fragments on scientific
and scholastic topics, essays, tales, letters, the beginnings and the
endings and the middles of books on history, politics, and polemics,
pieces of pamphlets and speeches, with a miscellaneous lot of poetry in
all measures. He was a great, good man, who never had what is called
an aim in life, but he certainly had an aim _after_ life; and yet no
one could esteem the importance of this pilgrimage more than he did. He
would frequently boast of being heterodox on that point. “You will hear,”
he would remark, “people depreciating this life as a matter of little
concern. Don’t allow their sophistry to have much weight with you. The
prevalent opinions which are flippantly spoken thereon will not stand the
test of sound Christian reasoning. That part of human existence which
finds its scene and scope of exertion in this life is filled with eternal
potentialities. You have heard it said that man wants but little here
below. Where else does he want it? Here is where he wants everything.
Then do not hesitate to ask, but be careful not to ask amiss. When the
battle is over, it will be too late to make requisitions for auxiliaries.
If you conquer, assistance will not be wanted; if you are defeated,
assistance cannot reach you. The fight cannot be renewed; the victory or
defeat will be final. This life is immense. You cannot think too much of
it, cannot estimate it too highly. A minute has almost an infinite value.
Man wants much here, and wants it all the time.” I thought his language
at that time fantastical; now I regard it as profound. From a survey
of his own aimless career, it is evident he did not reduce the good of
earthly existence of which he spoke to any sort of money value. Those
elements and forces of life to which he attached such deep significance
and importance could not have their equivalent in currency, nor in
comforts, nor in real estate, nor even in fame. My old preceptor had
spent most of his youth in travelling, and the picturesque meanderings
of the Rhine furnished subjects for many of his later recollections. I
recall now with a melancholy regret the many pleasant evenings I enjoyed
listening to his narratives of travel on that historic river, and in
imagination sat with him on the Drachenfels’ crest, looking down upon
scenes made memorable by the lives and struggles of countless heroes
and the crowds of humanity that came and went through the course of a
hundred generations--some leaving their mark, and others erasing it
again; some leaving a smile behind them on the face of the country, and
others a scar. He loved to talk about the beautiful city of Bonn, where
he had spent some years, it being the most attractive place, he said,
from Strasbourg to the sea--for learning was cheap there, and so were
victuals--the only things he found indispensable to a happy life. He
would glide into a monologue of dramatic glow and fervor in reciting how
he procured access to the extensive library of its new university, and,
crawling up a step-ladder, would perch himself on top like a Hun, who,
after a sleep of a thousand years, had resurrected himself, gathered his
bones from the plains of Chalons, and having procured a second-hand suit
of modern clothes from a Jew in Cologne, traced with eager avidity the
vicissitudes of war and empire since the days of Attila. It was there, no
doubt, he discovered the materials of this curious paper, which I found
among his literary remains. Whether he gathered the materials himself,
or merely transcribed the work of some previous writer, I am unable to
determine. Without laying any claim to critical acumen, I must confess
it appears to me to be a meritorious piece, and I picked it out, because
I thought it unique and brief, for submission to the more extensive
experience and more impartial judgment of THE CATHOLIC WORLD’S readers.
Having entire control of these productions of my friend and preceptor, I
took the liberty of substituting modern phraseology for what was antique,
and of putting the sketch in such style that the most superficial reader
will have no difficulty in running it over. Objection may be raised to
the title on the score of fitness. I did not feel authorized to change
it, believing the one chosen by the judgment of my old friend as suitable
as any I could substitute.
* * * * *
In the year 1250 the mind of man was as restless and impatient of
restraint as now, and some people in Bonn, under a quiet exterior,
nursed in their bosoms latent volcanoes of passion, and indulged the
waywardness of rebellious fancy to a degree that would have proved
calamitous to the placid flow of life and thought could instrumentality
for action have been found. There is indubitable proof that the principle
of the Reformation, which three hundred years later burst through the
environment of dogma and spread like a flood of lava over Europe,
existed actively in Bonn in the year named, and would have arrived at
mature strength if nature had not interposed an impassable barrier to
the proceeding. It is hard to rebel against nature, and it is madness
to expect success in such a revolt. Fourteen men, whose names have come
down to us, gave body and tone, and a not very clearly defined purpose,
to this untimely uprising against the inevitable in Bonn. How many others
were in sympathy or in active affiliation with them is not shown. Those
fourteen were bold spirits, who labored under the misfortune of having
come into the world three or four centuries too soon. They were great
men out of place. There is an element of rebellion in great spirits
which only finds its proper antidote in the stronger and more harmonious
principle of obedience. Obedience is the first condition of creatures.
Those fourteen grew weary of listening to the Gospel preached every
Sunday from the pulpit of S. Remigius, when they attended Mass with the
thousands of their townsmen. The Scriptures, both New and Old, were given
out in small doses, with an abundant mixture of explanation and homily
and salutary exhortation. Their appetites craved a larger supply of
Scripture, and indeed some of them were so unreasonable as to desire the
reading of the whole book, from Genesis to Revelations, at one service.
“Let us,” said Giestfacher, “have it all. No one is authorized to give a
selection from the Bible and hold back the rest. It is our feast, and we
have a right to the full enjoyment thereof.”
“Well,” said Heuck, his neighbor, to whom he addressed the remonstrance;
“go to the scrivener’s and purchase a copy and send your ass to carry
it home. Our friend Schwartz finished a fine one last week. It can be
had for sixteen hundred dollars. When you have it safe at home, employ
a reader, who will be able to mouth it all off for you in fifty hours,
allowing a few intervals for refreshment, but none for sleep.” And Heuck
laughed, or rather sneered, at Giestfacher as he walked away.
Giestfacher was a reformer, however, and was not to be put down in
that frivolous manner. He had been a student himself with the view of
entering the ministry, but, being maliciously charged with certain grave
irregularities, his prospects in that direction were seriously clouded,
and in a moment of grand though passionate self-assertion he threw up
his expectations and abandoned the idea of entering the church, but
instead took to the world. He was a reformer from his infancy, and
continually quarrelled with his family about the humdrum state of things
at home; was at enmity with the system of municipal government at Bonn;
and held very animated controversies with the physicians of the place
on the system of therapeutics then pursued, insisting strongly that all
diseases arose from bad blood, and that a vivisection with warm wine
would prove a remedy for everything. He lacked professional skill to
attempt an experiment in the medical reforms he advocated; besides, that
department would not admit of bungling with impunity. For municipal
reforms he failed in power, and the reward in fame or popular applause
that might follow successful operations in that limited sphere of action
was not deemed equivalent to the labor. But in the field of religion
there was ample room for all sorts of tentative processes without danger;
and, in addition to security, notoriety might be obtained by being
simply _outré_. He had settled upon religious reform, and his enthusiasm
nullified the cautionary suggestions of his reason, and reduced mountains
of difficulty to the insignificant magnitude of molehills; even Heuck
could be induced to adopt his views by cogent reasoning and much
persuasion. Enthusiasm is allied to madness--a splendid help, but a
dangerous guide.
Giestfacher used his tongue, and in the course of a year had made twelve
or fourteen proselytes. Those who cannot enjoy the monotony of life and
the spells of _ennui_ that attack the best-regulated temperaments, fly
to novelty for relief. The fearful prospect of an unknown and nameless
grave and an oblivious future drives many restless spirits into
experiments in morals and in politics as well as in natural philosophy,
in the vain hope of rescuing their names from the “gulf of nothingness”
that awaits mediocrity. The new reformers, zealous men and bold, met
in Giestfacher’s house on Corpus Christi in 1251, the minutes of which
meeting are still extant; and from that record I learn there were present
Stein the wheelwright, Lullman the baker, Schwartz the scrivener, Heuck
the armorer, Giestfacher the cloth merchant, Braunn, another scrivener,
Hartzwein the vintner, Blum the advocate, Werner, another scrivener,
Reudlehuber, another scrivener, Andersen, a stationer, Esch the
architect, Dusch the monk, discarded by his brethren for violations of
discipline, and Wagner the potter. Blum was appointed to take an account
of the proceedings, and Giestfacher was made president of the society.
“We are all agreed,” said Giestfacher, “that the Scriptures ought to be
given to the people. From these divine writings we learn a time shall
come when wars shall cease, and the Alemanni and the Frank and the Tartar
may eat from the same plate and drink out of the same cup in peace and
fraternity, and wear cloth caps instead of brass helmets, and plough the
fields with their spears instead of letting daylight through each other
therewith, and the shepherds shall tend their flocks with a crook and
not with a bow to keep off the enemy. How can that time come unless the
people be made acquainted with those promises? I believe we, who, like
the apostles, number fourteen, are divinely commissioned to change things
for the better, and initiate the great movements which will bring about
the millennium. Let us rise up to the dignity of our position. Let us
prove equal to the inspiration of the occasion. We are called together by
heaven for a new purpose. The time is approaching when universal light
will dispel the gloom, and peace succeed to all disturbance. Let us give
the Scriptures to the people. They are the words of God, that carry
healing on their wings. They are the dove that was sent out from the ark.
They are the pillar of light in the desert. They are the sword of Joshua,
the sling of David, the rod of Moses. Let us fourteen give them to the
people, and start out anew, like the apostles from Jerusalem, to overturn
the idols of the times and emancipate the nations. We have piled up heaps
of stones in every town and monuments of brass, and still men are not
changed. We see them still lying, warring, hoarding riches, and making
gods of their bellies--all of which is condemned by the word of God. What
will change all this? I say, let the piles of stone and the monuments of
brass slide, and give the Scriptures a chance. Let us give them to the
people, and the reign of brotherhood and peace will commence, wars shall
cease, nation will no longer rise up against nation, rebellion will erect
its horrid front no more. Men will cease hoarding riches and oppressing
the poor. There will be no more robbing rings in corporate towns, and men
in power will not blacken their character and imperil the safety of the
state by nepotism. The whole world will become pure. No scandals will
arise in the church, and there will be no blasphemy or false swearing,
and Christian brethren shall not conspire for each other’s ruin.”
“We see,” remarked Heuck, “that those who have the Scriptures are no
better than other people. They too are given to lying, hoarding riches,
warring one against another, and making gods of their bellies. How is
that?”
“Yes,” said Blum, “I know three scriveners of this town who boast of
having transcribed twenty Bibles each, and they get drunk thrice a week
and quarrel with their wives; and there’s Giebricht, the one-legged
soldier, who can repeat the Scriptures until you sleep listening to
him, says he killed nine men in battle and wounded twenty others. The
Scriptures did not make him very peaceful. The loss of a leg had a more
quieting effect on him than all his memorizing of the sacred books.”
“We did not get together,” said Werner, “to discuss that phase of the
subject. It was well understood, and thereunto agreed a month ago, that
the spread of the Scriptures was desirable; and to this end we met, that
means wise and effective may be devised whereby we can supply every one
with the word of God, that all may search therein for the correct and
approved way of salvation.”
“So be it,” said Dusch the monk.
“Hear, hear!” said Schwartz.
“Let us agree like brethren,” said Braunn.
“We are subject to one spirit,” said Hartzwein the vintner, “and all
moved by the same inspiration. Discord is unseemly. We must not dispute
on the subject of drunkenness. Let us have the mature views of Brother
Giestfacher, and his plans. The end is already clear if the means be of
approved piety and really orthodox. In addition to the Scriptures, I
would rejoice very much to see prayer more generally practised. We ought
to do nothing without prayer. Let us first of all consult the Lord. What
says Brother Blum?”
Blum rose and said it was a purely business meeting. He had no doubt
it ought to have been opened with prayer. It was an old and salutary
practice that came down from the days of the apostles, and Paul
recommended it. But as they were now in the midst of business, he thought
it would be as wise and as conformable with ancient Christian and saintly
practice to go on with their work, and rest satisfied with mental
ejaculation, as to inaugurate a formal prayer-meeting.
Esch thought differently; he held that prayer was always in season.
Reudlehuber meekly said that the Scriptures showed there was a time for
everything, whence it was plain that prayer might be out of place as well
as penitential tears on some occasions. It would not look well for a man
to rise up in the midst of a marriage feast and, beating his breast, cry
out _Mea culpa_.
“We have too many prayers in the church,” said Giestfacher, “and not
enough of Scripture; that is the trouble with us. Brethren must rise
above the weaknesses of the mere pietist. Moses was no pietist; he was a
great big, leonine character. We must be broad and liberal in our views;
not given to fault-finding nor complaining. Pray whenever you feel like
it, and drink when you have a mind to. Noah got drunk. I’d rather be
the prodigal son, and indulge in a hearty natural appetite for awhile,
than be his cautious, speculating, avaricious brother, who had not soul
enough most likely to treat his acquaintances to a pint of wine once in
his lifetime. Great men get tipsy. Great nations are bibulous. We are
not here to make war on those who drink wine and cultivate the grape, nor
are we authorized in making war on weavers because Dives was damned for
wearing fine linen. It is our mission to spread the Scriptures. The world
wants light. He is a benefactor of mankind who puts two rays where there
was only one before.”
“Let us hear your plans, Brother Giestfacher,” cried out a number of
voices simultaneously.
In response, Brother Giestfacher stated that there were no plans
necessary. All that was to be done was to circulate the Scriptures. Let
us get one hundred thousand sheets of vellum to begin with, and set a
hundred scriveners to work transcribing copies of the Bible, and then
distribute these copies among the people.
The plan was plain and simple and magnificent, Braunn thought, but there
were not ten thousand sheets of vellum in the town nor in the whole
district, and much of that would be required for civil uses; besides, the
number of sheep in the neighborhood had been so reduced by the recent war
that vellum would be scarce and costly for ten years to come.
Werner lamented the irremediable condition of the world when the free
circulation of the word of God depended on the number of sheep, and the
number of sheep was regulated by war, and war by the ambition, jealousy,
or pride of princes.
“It is painfully true,” said Heuck, “that the world stands in sad need
of reform, if souls are to be rescued from their spiritual perils only
by the means proposed in the magnificent sheep-skin scheme of Brother
Giestfacher.” It was horrible to think that the immortal part of man was
doomed to perish, to be snuffed out, as it were, in eternal darkness,
because soldiers had an unholy appetite for mutton.
Braunn said the work could be started on three or four thousand hides,
and ere they were used up a new supply might arrive from some unexpected
quarter.
Esch said that they ought to have faith; the Hand that fed the patriarch
in the desert would provide vellum if he was prayerfully besought for
assistance. _He_ would be willing to commence on one sheet, feeling
convinced there would be more than enough in the end.
Blum did not take altogether so sanguine a view of things as Brother
Esch. He was especially dubious about that vellum supply; not that he
questioned the power of Providence at all, but it struck him that it
would be just as well and as easy for the society to prayerfully ask for
an ample supply of ready-made Bibles as to expect a miracle in prepared
sheep-skin; and he was still further persuaded that if the books were
absolutely necessary to one’s salvation, they would be miraculously
given. But he did not put the movement on that ground. It is very easy
for men, and particularly idiotic men, to convince themselves that God
will answer all their whims and caprices by the performance of a miracle.
We are going upon the theory that the work is good, just as it is good to
feed the hungry and clothe the naked. We expect to find favor in heaven
because we endeavor to do a work of charity according to our honest
impression.
“How many persons,” inquired Heuck, “do you propose to supply with
complete copies of the Scriptures?”
“Every one in the district,” replied Giestfacher.
“Brother Dusch,” continued Heuck, “how many heads of families are there
in the district? Your abbot had the census taken a few month’s ago, while
you were yet in grace and favor at the monastery.”
Brother Dusch said he heard there were twenty-two thousand from the
Drachenfels to within six miles of Cologne, but all of them could not
read.
“We will send out,” said Giestfacher enthusiastically, “an army of
colporteurs, who will distribute and read at the same time.”
“I perceive,” said Blum, “that this discussion will never stop. New
avenues of thought and new mountains of objection are coming to view
at every advance in the debate. Let us do something first, and talk
afterwards. To supply twenty-two thousand persons with expensive volumes
will require considerably more than mere resolves and enthusiasm. I
propose that we buy up all the vellum in the city to-day, and that we
all go security for the payment. I propose also that we employ Brothers
Braunn, Schwartz, Werner, and Reudlehuber to commence transcribing, and
that we all go security for their pay. Unless we begin somewhere, we can
never have anything done. What says Brother Giestfacher?”
Giestfacher said it did not become men of action, reformers who proposed
to turn over the world and inaugurate a new era and a new life and a
new law, to stop at trifles or to consider petty difficulties. The
design that had been developed at that meeting contemplated a sweeping
change. Instead of having a few books, here and there, at every church,
cathedral, monastery, and market-place, learnedly and laboriously
expounded by saints of a thousand austerities and of penitential garb,
every house would be supplied, and there should be no more destitution in
the land. The prophecies and the gospels and the mysteries of revelation
would be on the lips of sucking babes, and the people who stood at the
street-corners and at the marts of trade, the tiller of the soil, the
pedler, the sailor, the old soldier, and the liberated prisoner, together
with the man who sold fish and the woman who sold buttermilk, would
stand up and preach the Gospel and display a mission, schoolboys would
discuss the contents of that book freely, and even the inmates of lunatic
asylums would expound it with luminous aptitude and startling fancy. The
proposition of Brother Blum met his entire approval. He would pledge
everything he had, and risk even life itself, to start the new principle,
so that the world might bask in sunshine and not in shadow. It was about
time that men had their intellects brightened up some. Even in the days
of the apostles those pious men did not do their whole duty. They labored
with much assiduity and conscientiousness, but they neglected to adopt
measures looking to the spread of the Scriptures. He had no doubt but
they fell a long way short of their mission, and were now enduring the
pangs of a peck of purgatorial coal for their remissness. There were
good men who perhaps found heaven without interesting themselves in the
multiplication of copies of the Bible. They were not called to that work;
but what was to be thought of those who had the call, the power, the
skill, and yet neglected to spread the word. He believed SS. Gregory
Nazianzen, Athanasius, Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine, and others of those
early doctors of the church, had a fearful account to render for having
neglected the Scriptures. S. Paul, too, was not free from censure. It was
true he wrote a few things, but he took no thought of multiplying copies
of his epistles.
“How many copies,” inquired Heuck, “do you think S. Paul ought to have
written of his letters before you would consider him blameless?”
“He ought,” said Giestfacher, “to have written all the time instead of
making tents. ‘How many copies’ is a professional question which I will
leave the scriveners to answer. I may remark that it would evidently be
unprofitable for us to enter on a minute and detailed discussion on that
point here. It is our duty to supplement the shortcomings of those early
workers in the field, and finish what they failed to accomplish. They
were bound to give the new principle a fair start. The plan suggested was
the best, simplest, and clearest, and he hoped every one of the brethren
would give it a hearty and cordial support.”
The principle of communism, or the right of communities to govern
themselves in certain affairs and to carry on free trade with certain
other communities, had been granted the previous century, and Bonn
was one of the towns that enjoyed the privilege; but the people still
respected religion and did no trafficking on holydays. Giestfacher could
not therefore purchase the vellum on Corpus Christi, but had to wait till
next day, at which time he could not conveniently find the other members
of the new Bible society, and, fearing that news of their project would
get abroad and raise the price of the article he wanted, he hastened to
the various places where it was kept for sale, and bought all of it up in
the course of two hours, paying his own money in part and giving his bond
for the balance. The parchment was delivered to the four scriveners, who
gathered their families about them, and all the assistants (journeymen)
that could be found in the town, and proceeded with the transcribing of
the Bible. At the next meeting each scrivener reported that he had about
half a book ready, that the work was going rapidly and smoothly forward,
and that the scribes were enthusiastic at the prospect of brisk business
and good pay. The report was deemed very encouraging. It went to show
that the society could have four Bibles every two weeks, or about one
hundred a year, and that in the course of two hundred and twenty years
every head of a family in the district could be provided with a Bible of
his own. The scriveners stated, moreover, that they had neglected their
profane business, for which they could have got cash, to proceed in the
sacred work, and as there were several people depending on them for means
of living, a little money would be absolutely necessary with the grace of
God.
Giestfacher also stated that he spent all the money he had in part
payment for the parchment, and pledged his property for the balance. His
business was somewhat crippled already in consequence of the outlay,
and he expected to have part of the burden assumed by every one of the
society.
Werner said he had fifteen transcribers working for him, and each one
agreed to let one-third of the market value of his work remain in the
hands of the society as a subscription to the good work, but the other
two-thirds would have to be paid weekly, as they could not live without
means. They were all poor, and depending solely on their skill in
transcribing for a living.
The debate was long, earnest, eloquent, and more or less pious.
Blum made a motion that the bishop of the diocese and the Pope be made
honorary members of the society. Giestfacher opposed this with eloquent
acrimony, saying it was a movement outside of all sorts of church
patronage; that it was designed to supersede churches and preaching; for
when every man had the Bible he would be a church unto himself, and would
not need any more teaching. He also had a resolution adopted pledging
each and every member to constitute himself a colporteur of the Bible,
and to read and peddle it in sun and rain; and it was finally settled
that a subscription should be taken up; that each member of the society
be constituted a collector, and proceed at once to every man who loved
the Lord and gloried in the Gospel to get his contribution.
At the next meeting the brethren were all present except Dusch, who was
reported as an absconder with the funds he had collected, and was said to
be at that moment in Cologne, drunk perhaps. Four complete Bibles were
presented as the result of two weeks’ hard labor and pious effort and the
aggregate production of forty-five writers. The financial reports on the
whole were favorable; and the scriveners were provided with sufficient
means and encouragement to begin another set of four Bibles. Brother
Giestfacher was partially secured in his venture for the parchment,
while it was said that the article had doubled in price during the past
fortnight, and very little of it could be got from Cologne, as there was
a scarcity of it there also, coupled with an extraordinary demand. It
was also stated that the monks at the monastery had to erase the works
of Virgil in order to find material for making a copy of the homilies
of S. John Chrysostom which was wanted for the Bishop of Metz. In like
manner, it was decided to erase the histories of Labanius and Zozirnus,
as being cheaper than procuring original parchment on which to transcribe
a fine Greek copy of the whole Bible, to take the place of one destroyed
by the late war. The heavy purchase that Brother Giestfacher had made
created a panic in the vellum market that was already felt in the heart
of Burgundy. The scriveners’ business had also experienced a revulsion.
People of the world who wanted testamentary and legal documents, deeds,
contracts, and the like properly engrossed, were offering fabulous
sums to have the work done, as most of the professionals of that class
were now engaged by the society, and had no time to do any other sort
of writing. A debate sprung up as to the proper disposition to be made
of the four Bibles on hand, and also as to the manner of beginning and
conducting the distribution. In view of the demand for the written word,
and of the scarcity of copies and the high price of parchment, it was
suggested by Heuck to sell them, and divide the proceeds among the poor
and the cripples left after the late war. Five hundred dollars each could
be readily got for the books, he said, and it was extremely doubtful
whether those who would get them as gifts from the society would resist
the temptation of selling them to the first purchaser that came along.
In addition to this heavy reason in favor of his line of policy, Heuck
suggested the possibility of trouble arising when they should come to
grapple with the huge difficulties of actual distribution; to give one of
those volumes, he said, would be like giving an estate and making a man
wealthy for life.
Giestfacher said it would be impracticable to make any private
distribution among the destitute for some time. The guilds of coopers,
tailors, shoemakers, armorers, fullers, tanners, masons, artificers,
and others should be first supplied; and in addition to the Bible kept
chained in the market-place for all who wished to read, he would have one
placed at the town-pump and one at the town-house, so that the thirsty
might also drink the waters of life, and those who were seeking justice
at the court might ascertain the law of God before going in.
Blum said another collection would have to be raised to erect a shed over
the Bibles that were proposed to be placed at the town-pump and at the
town-house and to pay for suitable chains and clasps to secure them from
the depredations of the pilfering.
Esch was of opinion that another subscription could not be successfully
taken up until their work had produced manifest fruit for good. The
people have much faith, but when they find salt mixed with their drink
instead of honey, credulity is turned into disgust. A Bible chained to
the town-pump will be a sad realization of their extravagant hopes.
Every man who subscribed five dollars expects to get a book worth five
hundred, an illuminated Bible fit for a cathedral church. He warned them
that they were getting into a labyrinth, and that they would have to
resort to prayer yet to carry them through in safety. Werner thought it
would be wisest to pursue a quiescent policy for some time, and to forego
the indulgence of their anxious desire for palpable results until they
should be in a condition to make an impression. He advocated the wisdom
of delay. They also serve, he said, who only stand and wait, and it might
prove an unwise proceeding to come out with their public exhibition just
then. In a few months, when thirty or forty Bibles would be on hand, a
larger number than could be found in any library in the world, they might
hope, by the show of so much labor, to create enthusiasm.
“But still,” urged Heuck, “you will have the difficulty to contend
with--who is to get them?”
“There will,” remarked Blum, “be a greater difficulty to contend with
about that time: the settlement of obligations for parchment and the pay
of the scriveners who are employed in transcribing. Our means at present,
even if we pay the scriveners but one-third their wages, will not suffice
to bring out twenty volumes. So we are just in this difficulty: in order
to do something, we must have means, and in order to get means, we must
do something. It is a sort of vicious circle projected from logic into
finance. It will take the keen-edged genius of Brother Giestfacher to cut
this knot.”
“The work,” said Giestfacher, “in which we are engaged is of such merit
that it will stand of itself. I have no fears of ultimate triumph. If
you all fail, God and I will carry it on. Heaven is in it. I am in it.
It must succeed. I am a little oldish, I confess, but there is twenty
years of work in me still. I feel my foot sufficiently sure to tread the
perilous path of this adventure to the goal.”
“Let us,” interposed Schwartz, “stop this profitless debate, and give
a cheer to Brother Giestfacher. He is the blood and the bone of this
movement. We are in with him. We are all in the same boat. If we have
discovered a pusillanimous simpleton among us, it is not too late to cast
him out. I feel my gorge and my strength rise together, and I swear to
you by S. Remigius, brethren, that I am prepared to sink or swim, and
whoever attempts to scuttle the ship shall himself perish first.”
Two or three other brethren, feeling the peculiar inspiration of the
moment, rose up and, stamping their feet on the floor, proclaimed their
adherence to the principles of the society, and vowed to see it through
to the end.
This meeting then adjourned.
There is no minute of any subsequent meeting to be found among the
manuscripts that I have consulted, but I discovered a statement made by
Heuck, dated six months later, who, being called before the municipal
authorities to testify what he knew about certain transactions of a
number of men that had banded themselves together secretly for the
purpose of creating a panic in the vellum market, and of disturbing
the business of the scriveners, said he was one of fourteen citizens
interested in the promulgation of the Gospel free to the poor. That,
after five or six meetings, he left the society in company with two
others; that two of the members became obnoxious, and were expelled--the
one, Dusch, for embezzling money collected for Scripture-writing and
Scripture-diffusing purposes, the other, Werner, for having retained
one of their volumes, and disposed of it to the lord of Drachenfels
for four hundred dollars; that they did not pursue and prosecute these
delinquents for fear of bringing reproach on the project; and then he
went on to state: “I left the society voluntarily and in disgust. We had
fourteen Bibles on hand, but could not agree about their distribution.
They were too valuable to give away for nothing, and it was discovered
that they were all written in Latin, and not in the vernacular, and they
would prove of as little value to the great mass of people for whom
they were originally designed as if they had been written in Hebrew.
In addition to this I found, for I understand the language perfectly,
that no two of them were alike, and, in conjunction with scrivener
Schwartz, I minutely examined one taken at random from the pile, and
compared it with the volume at the Cathedral. We found fifteen hundred
discrepancies. In some places whole sentences were left out. In others,
words were made to express a different sense from the original. In
others, letters were omitted or put in redundantly, in such a way as to
change the meaning; and the grammatical structure was villanously bad.
Seeing that the volumes were of no use as a representation of the word
of God, and being conscientiously convinced that the books contained
poison for the people instead of medicine, I made a motion in meeting
to have them all burned. Schwartz opposed it on the ground that they
were innoxious anyhow, there being none of the common people capable
of understanding the language in which they were written, and, though
they were a failure as Bibles, the vellum might be again used; and as
the scriveners were not paid for their labor, they had a claim upon the
volumes. The scriveners got the books, to which, in my opinion, they had
no just claim, for the villanous, bad work they did on them deserved
censure and not pay. I have heard since that some of those scriveners
made wealth by selling the books to Englishmen for genuine and carefully
prepared transcripts from authorized texts. The president and founder of
the society, Giestfacher, is now in jail for debt, he having failed to
meet his obligations for the vellum he purchased when he took it into
his head to enlighten mankind--more especially that portion of it that
dwells on the Rhine adjacent to the city of Bonn--by distributing corrupt
copies of Latin Bibles to poor people who are not well able to read their
own language. The ‘good work’ still occupies the brains and energies of
three or four enthusiasts, who have already arrived at the conclusion
that the apostles were in league with hell to keep the people ignorant,
because they did not give every man a copy of the Bible. The founder sent
me a letter two days ago, in which he complains of being deserted by his
companions in his extremity. His creditors have seized on all his goods,
and there is a considerable sum yet unpaid. He blames the Pope and the
bishop in unmeasured terms for this; says it is a conspiracy to keep the
Bible from the people. He sees no prospect of being released unless the
members of the society come to his speedy relief. The principles, he
says, for which he suffers will yet triumph. The time will come when
Bibles will be multiplied by some cheap and easy process. Until then,
the common run of humanity must be satisfied to be damned, drawing what
little consolation they may from the expectation that their descendants
a few centuries hence will enjoy the slim privilege of reading Bibles
prepared with as little regard to accuracy as these were. I am sorry to
see such a noble intellect as Giestfacher undoubtedly possesses show
signs of aberration. The entire failure of his project was more than
he could bear. He had centred his hopes upon it. He indulged dreams of
fame and greatness arising out of the triumph of his idea. Esch has
become an atheist. He says the Christian’s God would not have given
a book to be the guide and dependence of man for salvation, and yet
allow nature, an inferior creation, to interpose insuperable barriers
to its promulgation. Every time a sheep-skin is destroyed, says Esch,
a community is damned. The dearness and scarcity of parchment keep the
world in ignorance. Braunn says the world cannot be saved except by a
special revelation to every individual, for there is hardly a copy of the
Bible without errors, so that whether every human creature got one or
not, they would be still unsafe. One of the common herd must learn Latin
and Greek and Hebrew well, and then spend a lifetime tracing up, through
all its changes, transcriptions, and corruptions of idiom, one chapter,
or at most one book, and die before he be fully assured of the soundness
of one text, a paragraph, a line, a word. In fact, says Braunn, there
can be no certainty about anything. Language may have had altogether a
different meaning twelve hundred years ago to what it has now. Braunn
and Schwartz and myself wanted to have a committee of five of our number
appointed to revise and correct the text of each book that was produced
by comparing it with such Greek and Hebrew copies as were represented of
sound and correct authority; but Giestfacher laughed at us, saying we
knew nothing of Greek or Hebrew; that we would have to hire some monks
to do the job for us, which would be going back again to the very places
and principles and practices against which we had revolted and protested.
Moreover, continued Giestfacher, we cannot tell whether the oldest, most
original copies that can be found are true in every particular. How can
we know from any sort of mere human testimony that this copy or that is
in accordance with what the prophets and apostles wrote. The whole Bible
may be wrong as far as our _knowledge_, as such, is able to testify. We
are reduced to _faith_ in this connection and must rest on that alone.
“I thought, and so did Schwartz, that the faith of Giestfacher must be
peculiar when it could accept copies as good enough and true enough after
we had discovered hundreds of palpable and grievous errors in them. A
book of romance would do a person of Giestfacher’s temper as well as the
Bible--faith being capable of making up for all deficiencies. I saw that
an extravagance of credulity, called faith, on the part of Giestfacher,
led to monomania; and a predominance of irrational reason on the part of
Esch had led to utter negation. I did not covet either condition, and I
concluded to remain safe at anchor where I had been before, rather than
longer follow those adventurers in a wild career after a fancied good--a
mere phantom of their own creation. I lost twenty-five dollars by the
temporary madness. That cannot be recalled. I rejoice that I lost no
more, and I am grateful that the hallucination which lasted nearly a year
has passed away without any permanent injury.”
The remainder of Heuck’s statement had partially faded from the parchment
by time and dampness, and could not be accurately made out. Sufficient
was left visible, however, to show that he expressed a desire to be held
excusable for whatever injuries to souls might result from the grave
errors that existed in the Bibles disseminated by the cupidity of the
scriveners with the guilty knowledge of such errors.
I interested myself in rescuing from oblivion such parts of the record
of those curious mediæval transactions as served to show to the people
of later times what extraordinary mental and religious activity existed
in those ages, when it was foolishly and stupidly thought there were but
henchmen and slaves on the one side, and bloody mailed despots on the
other. The arrogance of more favored epochs has characterized those days
by the epithet of “dark.” Pride is apt to be blind. The characterization
is unjust. All the lights of science could not come in one blaze. The
people of those days looked back upon a period anterior to their own as
“dark,” and those looked still further backward upon greater obscurity,
as they thought. The universal boastfulness of man accounts for this
increasing obscurity as we reach back into antiquity. Philosophers and
poets and men of learning, thinking themselves, and wishing to have other
people think them, above personal egotism, adopted the method of praising
their age, and thus indirectly eulogizing, themselves; and as they could
not compare their times with the future of which they knew nothing, they
naturally fell into the unfilial crime of drawing disparaging comparisons
with their fathers. There is an inclination, too, in the imperfection
of human nature to belittle what is remote and magnify what is near at
hand. Even now, men as enthusiastic and conscientious and religious as
Heuck and Giestfacher and Schwartz find themselves surrounded by the same
difficulties, and as deeply at a loss to advance a valid reason for their
revolt and their protest.
EARLY PERSECUTIONS OF THE CHRISTIANS.
In one of his bold Apologies[9] the great African writer Tertullian said
to the rulers of the Roman Empire that “it was one and the same thing for
the truth [of Christianity] to be announced to the world, and for the
world to hate and persecute it.” This persecution of the church began
on the very spot that was her birth-place; for soon after the ascension
of our Lord the wicked Jews tried by every means to crush her. “From
the days of the apostles,” wrote Tertullian in the IIId century, “the
synagogue has been a source of persecutions.” At first the church was
attacked by words only; but these were soon replaced by weapons, when
Stephen was stoned, the apostles were thrown into prison and scourged,
and all the East had risen in commotion against the Christians. The
Gentiles soon followed the example of the Jews, and those persecutions
which bore an official character throughout the Roman Empire, and lasted
for three centuries, are commonly called the Ten General Persecutions.
Besides these, there were partial persecutions at all times in some part
or other of the empire. Nero, whose name is synonymous with cruelty, was
the first emperor to begin a general persecution of the Christians; and
Tertullian made a strong point in his favor when he cried out to the
people (_Apol. v._), saying, “That our troubles began at such a source,
we glory; for whoever has studied his nature knows well that nothing
but what is good and great was ever condemned by Nero.” This persecution
began in the year 64, and lasted four years. Its pretext was the burning
of Rome, the work of the emperor himself, who ambitiously desired, when
he would have rebuilt the city and made it still more grand, to call
it by his own name; but the plan not succeeding, he tried to avert the
odium of the deed from his own person, and accused the Christians. Their
extermination was decreed. The pagan historian Tacitus has mentioned,
in his _Annals_ (xv. 44), some of the principal torments inflicted on
the Christians. He says that they were covered with the skins of wild
beasts and torn to pieces by savage hounds, were crucified, were burned
alive, and that some, being coated with resinous substances, were put up
in the imperial garden at night to serve as human torches. The _Roman
Martyrology_ makes a special commemoration, on the 24th of June, of these
martyrs for having all been disciples of the apostles and the firstlings
of the Christian flock which the church in Rome presented to the Lord.
In this persecution S. Peter was crucified with his head downwards; S.
Paul was beheaded; and among the other more illustrious victims we find
S. Mark the Evangelist, S. Thecla, the first martyr of her sex, SS.
Gervase and Protase at Milan, S. Vitalis at Ravenna, and S. Polycetus at
Saragossa in Spain. The number of the slain, and the hitherto unheard-of
cruelties practised upon them, moved to pity many of the heathen, and
the sight of so much fortitude for a principle of religion was the
means, through divine grace, of many conversions. After this, as after
every succeeding persecution, the great truth spoken by Tertullian was
exemplified: that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of Christians.
By a law of the empire, which was not revoked until nearly three hundred
years afterwards, under Constantine, the profession of the Christian
religion was made a capital offence. This law, it is true, was not
enforced at all times, especially under benign or indifferent rulers; but
it hung continually suspended over the heads of the Christians like a
sword of Damocles.
The second persecution was that of Domitian, from 94 to 96. Tertullian
calls him “a portion of Nero by his cruelty.” At first he only imposed
heavy fines upon the wealthy Christians; but, thirsting for blood, he
soon published more cruel edicts against them. Among his noblest victims
were his cousin-german, Flavius Clemens, a man of consular dignity; John
the Evangelist, who was thrown into a caldron of boiling oil (from which,
however, he miraculously escaped unhurt); Andrew the Apostle, Dionysius
the Areopagite, and Onesimus, S. Paul’s convert. Hegesippus, quoted by
Eusebius in his _Ecclesiastical History_, has recorded a very interesting
fact about the children of Jude, surnamed Thaddeus in the Gospel,
telling us that, having confessed the faith under this reign, they were
always honored in the church of Jerusalem, not alone as martyrs, but as
relatives of Jesus Christ according to the flesh.
The third persecution was Trajan’s, from 97 to 116. In answer to a
letter from his friend Pliny the Younger, who had command in Asia Minor,
the emperor ordered that the Christians were not to be sought out, but
that, if accused, and they remained obstinate in their faith, they
were to be put to death. Under an appearance of mercy a large field
was opened for the cruelty and exactions of Roman officials, which
they were not slow to work. A single circumstance attests the severity
of the persecution. This was that the Tiberian governor of Palestine
wrote to the emperor complaining of the odious duty imposed upon him,
since the Christians were forthcoming in greater numbers than he could,
without tiring, have executed. The persecution was particularly severe
in the East. Simeon, bishop of Jerusalem, Ignatius of Antioch, and the
virgin Domitilla, who was related to three emperors, are among the more
illustrious martyrs of the period.
Next came the persecution of Hadrian, lasting from 118 to about 129. We
have the authority of S. Jerome for saying that it was very violent.
This emperor was a coward and, perhaps as a consequence, intensely
superstitious. One of his particular grievances against the Christians
was that they professed a religion in which he had no share. Under him
perished, with countless others, Pope Alexander I. and his priests,
Eventius and Theodulus; Eustace, a celebrated general, with his wife and
little children; Symphorosa and her seven sons; Zoe, with her husband and
two children.
The fifth was the persecution of Marcus Aurelius. Although he was by
nature well inclined, he was certainly the author of much innocent
bloodshed, which may be in part ascribed to the powerful influence
of the so-called philosophers whose company and tone he affected. The
persecution raged most severely among the Gauls; and elsewhere we find
the illustrious names of Justin the great Apologist, Polycarp, bishop of
Smyrna, and Felicitas and her seven children.
Followed the persecution of Septimius Severus, which lasted from 200
to 211, and was so extremely violent that many Christians believed
Antichrist had come. It reaped from the church such distinguished
persons as Pope Victor at Rome; Leonidas, father of the great Origen, at
Alexandria; Irenæus and companions at Lyons; Perpetua and Felicitas in
Mauritania. Egypt was particularly rich in holy martyrs.
After this one came the persecution of Maximinus, from 235 to 237. It was
in the beginning more especially directed against the sacred ministers
of the church. Several popes were put to death; and among the inferior
clergy we find the deacon Ambrose, who was the bosom friend of Origen and
one of his principal assistants in his work on the Holy Scriptures.
The persecution of Decius lasted from 249 to 251. The Christians, in
spite of all repressive measures, had steadily increased in numbers; but
this emperor thought to do what his predecessors had failed in, and was
hardly seated on the throne before he published most cruel edicts against
them. Among the more celebrated names of this persecution are those
of Popes Fabian and Cornelius; Saturninus, first bishop of Toulouse;
Babylas, bishop of Antioch; the famous Christopher in Lycia, about whom
there is a beautiful legend; and the noble virgin Agatha in Sicily. The
great scholar Origen was put to the torture during this persecution, but
escaped death. Like Maximinus, this emperor singled out the heads of
the various local churches, the most active and learned ministers, the
highest of both sexes in the social scale, aiming less at the death than
the apostasy of Christians, hoping in this way to destroy the faith;
whence S. Cyprian laments in one of his epistles that the Christians
suffer atrocious torments without the final consolation of martyrdom.
One effect of this persecution was of immense benefit to the church in
the East; for S. Paul, surnamed First Hermit, took refuge from the storm
in Upper Egypt, where he peopled by his example the region around Thebes
with those holy anchorites since called the Fathers of the Desert.
The ninth persecution was that of Valerian, who, although at first
favorable to the Christians, became one of their greatest opposers at
the instigation of their sworn enemy, Marcian. At this date we find upon
the list of martyrs the eminent names of Popes Stephen and Sixtus II.,
Lawrence the Roman deacon, and Cyprian, the great convert and bishop of
Carthage.
The persecution of Diocletian was the last and the bloodiest of all. It
raged from 303 to 310. Maximian, the emperor’s colleague, had already
put to death many Christians, and among others, on the 22d of September,
286, Maurice and his Theban legion, before the persecution became
general throughout the Roman Empire. It began in this form at Nicomedia
on occasion of a fire that consumed a part of the imperial palace, and
which was maliciously ascribed to the Christians; and it is remarkable
that the two extreme persecutions of the early church should both have
begun with a false charge of incendiarism. Diocletian used to sit upon
his throne at Nicomedia, watching the death-pangs of his Christian
subjects who were being burned, not singly, but in great crowds. Many
officers and servants of his household perished, and, to distinguish
them from the rest, they were dropped into the sea with large stones
fastened about their necks. A special object of the persecutors was to
destroy the churches and tombs of earlier martyrs, to seize the vessels
used in the Holy Sacrifice, and to burn the liturgical books and the
Holy Scriptures. The _Roman Martyrology_ makes a particular mention on
the 2d of January of those who suffered death rather than deliver up
these books to the tyrant. Although innumerable copies of the Scriptures
perished, not a few were saved, and new copies multiplied either by favor
of the less stringent executors of the law, or because the privilege
was bought by the faithful at a great price. Some years ago the German
Biblical critic Tischendorf discovered on Mount Sinai a Greek codex of
extraordinary antiquity and only two removes from an original of Origen.
It is connected with one of the celebrated martyrs of this persecution,
and bears upon what we have just said of the Sacred Scriptures. In this
codex, at the end of the Book of Esther, there is a note attesting that
the copy was collated with a very ancient manuscript that had itself
been corrected by the hand of the blessed martyr Pamphilus, priest
of Cæsarea in Palestine, while in prison, assisted by Antoninus, his
fellow-prisoner, who read for him from a copy of the Hexapla of Origen,
which had been revised by that author himself. The touching spectacle of
these two men, both of whom gave their blood for the faith, occupied,
in the midst of the inconveniences, pain, and weariness of captivity,
in transcribing good copies of the Bible, is one of the many instances,
discovered in every age, showing the care that the church has had to
multiply and guard from error the holy written Word of God.
Among the petty sources of annoyance during this persecution, was the
difficulty of procuring food, drink, or raiment that had not been offered
to idols; for the pagan priests had set up statues of their divinities
in all the market-places, hostelries, and shops, and at the private and
public fountains. They used also to go around city and country sprinkling
with superstitious lustral water the gardens, vineyards, orchards, and
fields, so as to put the Christians to the greatest straits to obtain
anything that had not been polluted in this manner. We learn from the
Acts of S. Theodotus, a Christian tradesman of Ancyra, the obstacles he
had to surmount at this time to procure pure bread and wine to be used
by the priests in the Mass. We can appreciate the intense severity of
this persecution in many ways; but one of the most singular proofs of
it is that pagans in Spain inscribed upon a marble monument, erected in
Diocletian’s honor, _that he had abolished the very name of Christian_.
This emperor had also the rare but unenviable privilege of giving his
name to a new chronological period, called by the pagans, in compliment
to his bloody zeal for their rites, the Era of Diocletian; but the
Christians called it the Era of the Martyrs. It began on the 29th of
August, 284, and was long in use in Egypt and Abyssinia. Some of the more
renowned victims of this persecution are Sebastian, an imperial officer;
Agnes, a Roman virgin; Lucy, a virgin of Syracuse, and the Forty Martyrs
of Sebaste.
It may be interesting to note briefly the chief causes of so much cruel
bloodshed, even under princes of undoubted moderation in the general
government of affairs, as were Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus the
Pious, and a few others.
The most continual, if not the deepest, source of persecution were the
passions of the populace. Calumny of the subtlest and most popular kind,
and pressed at all times with patient effort, had so inflamed the minds
of the brutal lower classes that only a word or a sign was required to
set them upon the Christians. These were called disloyal to the empire,
unfriendly to the princes, of a foreign religion, people who refused to
fall into the ways of the majority, and enemies of the human race. From
the remains of ancient histories, from the Acts of martyrs, from pagan
inscriptions, and from other sources, more than fifty-seven different
opprobrious qualifications, applied to the Christians as a body, have
been counted up. But when particular calumnies became any way stale, the
Christians could always be accused as the cause of every calamity that
befell the state; so that, in the words of Tertullian (_Apol. xl._), “If
the Tiber exceeded its limits, if the Nile did not rise to irrigate the
fields, if the rain failed to fall, if the earth quaked, if famine or
pestilence scourged the land, at once the cry was raised, Christians to
the lions!”
The next most constant source of trouble was the pernicious influence of
the Philosophers--a set of men who pretended to be seekers after wisdom,
and distinguished themselves from the vulgar by a certain style of dress.
Puffed up as they were with their own knowledge, nothing irritated
their pride so much as that men of the despised Christian class should
presume to dispute their doctrines and teach that profane philosophy
was naught, since man could not be made perfect by human wisdom, but
only by the testimony of Christ who was crucified. Among the Christians,
too, a special order of men whom we call Apologists, and among whom we
count Justin, Tertullian, Tatian, Arnobius, Minutius Felix, Origen,
Aristides, Quadratus, Athenagoras, and Miltiades the chief, exposed in
their eloquent writings the vanity, contradictions, and vices of their
opponents, succeeding sometimes in silencing false accusations, and even
in arresting the course of persecution. Their apologies and memorials
form one of the most instructive branches of early Christian literature,
and are a considerable compensation for the loss of so many Acts of
martyrs and other venerable documents destroyed by the pagans or which
have otherwise perished.
The third great cause of persecution was found (to use a comparatively
modern word) in the Erastianism of the Roman Empire. The emperor was, by
right of the purple, high-pontiff, and no religion was recognized that
did not profess its existence and authority dependent upon the state.
Naturally, a religion whose followers would reply to every iniquitous
command, “We ought to obey God rather than men,” could expect no mercy,
but only continual war.
Sometimes the Christians were put to death in the same manner as the
common malefactors, such as by decapitation, crucifixion, or scourging;
sometimes in the manner reserved for particular classes of criminals, as
being hurled down a precipice, drowned, devoured by wild beasts, left to
starve. But sometimes, also, the exquisite cruelty of the persecutors
delighted to feed upon the sufferings of its victims, and make dying as
long and painful as possible. Thus, there are innumerable examples of
Christians being flayed alive, the skin being neatly cut off in long
strips, and pepper or vinegar rubbed into the raw flesh; or slowly
crushed between two large stones; or having molten lead poured down the
throat. Some Christians were tied to stakes in the ground and gored to
death by wild bulls, or thinly smeared with honey and exposed under a
broiling sun to the insects which would be attracted; some were tied to
the tails of vicious horses and dragged to pieces some were sewed up
in sacks with vipers, scorpions, or other venomous things, and thrown
into the water; some had their members violently torn from the trunk of
the body; some were tortured by fire in ways almost unknown to the most
savage Indians of America; some were slowly scourged to death with whips
made of several bronze chainlets, at the extremity of each of which was
a jagged bullet; while jerking out of the teeth in slow succession;
cutting off the nose, ears, lips, and breasts; tearing of the flesh with
hot pincers; sticking sharp sticks up under the finger-nails; being held
suspended, head downward, over a smoking fire; stretching upon a rack,
and breaking upon the wheel, were some only of the commonest tortures
that preceded the final death-stroke by sword or lance. Many instruments
used in tormenting the martyrs have been found at different times, and
are now carefully preserved in collections of Christian antiquities;
and from these, from early-written descriptions, and from the rude
representations on the tombs of martyrs in the Catacombs, it is known
positively that over one hundred different modes of torture were used
upon the Christians.
From the earliest period particular pains were taken by the pastors of
the church to have the remains of the martyrs collected and some account
of their sufferings consigned to letters; and Pope S. Clement, a disciple
of the Apostle Peter, instituted a college of notaries, one for each
of the seven ecclesiastical districts into which he had divided Rome,
with the special charge of collecting with diligence all the information
possible about the martyrs. They were not to pass over even the minutest
circumstances of their confession of faith and death. This attendance on
the last moments of the martyrs was often accompanied by great personal
risk, or at least a heavy expense in the way of buying the good-will of
venal officers; but it was a thing of the utmost importance, in view
of the church’s doctrine concerning the veneration and invocation of
saints, that nothing should be left undone which prudence would suggest
to leave it beyond a doubt that the martyrs had confessed the _true_
faith, and had suffered death _for_ the faith. The pagans soon discovered
the value that was set upon such documents, and very many of them were
seized and destroyed. The fact that the Act of the martyrs were objects
of careful search is so well attested--as is also the other fact, that
an immense number perished--that it is a wonder and a grace of divine
Providence how any, however few comparatively, have come down to us. It
has been calculated that at least five million Christians--men, women,
and children--were put to death for the faith during the first three
centuries of the church.
The French historian Ampère has very justly remarked that amidst the
moral decay of the Roman Empire, when all else was lust and despotism,
the Christians alone saved the dignity of human nature; and the Spaniard
Balmes, when treating of the progress of individuality under the
influence of Catholicity (_European Civilization_, ch. xxiii.), remarks
that it was the martyrs who first gave the great example of proclaiming
that “the individual should cease to acknowledge power when power exacts
from him what he believes to be contrary to his conscience.” The patience
of the martyrs rebuked the sensualism of the pagans; and their fearless
assertions that matters of conscience are beyond the jurisdiction of any
civil ruler proved them to be the best friends of human liberty; while
their constancy and number during three hundred years of persecution,
that only ceased with their triumph, is one of the solid arguments to
prove that the Catholic Church has a divine origin, and a sustaining
divinity within her.
“A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchang’d,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang’d;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She fear’d no danger, for she knew no sin:
Yet had she oft been chas’d with horns and hounds,
And Scythian shafts, and many wingèd wounds
Aim’d at her heart; was often forc’d to fly,
And doom’d to death, tho’ fated not to die.”
--DRYDEN.
THE UNREMEMBERED MOTHER.
Unknown, beloved, thou whose shadow lies
Across the sunny threshold of my years;
Whom memory with never-resting eyes
Seeks thro’ the past, but cannot find for tears;
How bitter is the thought that I, thy child,
Remember not the touch, the look, the tone,
Which made my young life thrill--that I alone
Forget the face that o’er my cradle smil’d!
And yet I know that if a sudden light
Reveal’d thy living likeness, I should find
That my poor heart hath pictur’d thee aright.
So I will wait, nor think the lot unkind
That hides thee from me, till I know by sight
The perfect face thro’ love on earth divin’d.
DURATION.
Time and duration are usually considered synonymous, as no duration is
perceived by us, except the duration of movement, or of such things as
are subject to movement; and such duration is time. But, rigorously
speaking, time and duration are not synonymous; for they are to one
another in the same relation as place and space. As no place is possible
without real absolute space, so no time is possible without real absolute
duration; and as place consists of intervals in space, so time consists
of intervals in duration. Yet there may be duration independently of
time, just as there may be space independent of places; and for this
reason the nature of duration must be determined apart from the nature
of time. In treating of this subject we shall have to answer a series of
questions altogether similar to those which we have answered in treating
of space and place. Hence we shall follow the same order and method in
our present treatise which we have followed in our articles on space,
with this difference, however: that, to avoid useless repetitions, we
will omit the development of some of those reasonings which the reader
himself can easily transfer from space to duration.
Duration is commonly defined as “the permanence of a being in its
actuality”--_Permanentia rei in esse_. The duration of a being which
perseveres in existence without any intrinsic change is called “standing
duration”--_Duratio stans_. The duration of a being which is actually
subject to intrinsic mutations is called “flowing duration”--_Duratio
fluens_.
Flowing duration evidently implies succession, and succession involves
time; for succession is a relation between something which follows
and something which precedes. On the other hand, time also involves
succession; whence it would seem that neither time nor succession can be
defined apart from one another, the definition of the latter presupposing
that of the former, and that of the former presupposing the notion of
the latter. Although we need not be anxious about this point (for time
and succession really involve one another, and therefore may well be
included under the same definition), we must observe that the notion
of succession, though ordinarily applied to duration, extends to other
things also whenever they follow one another in a certain order. Thus
the crust of the earth is formed by a succession of strata, the Alps by
a succession of mountains, the streets of the city by a succession of
houses, etc. Hence the notion of succession is more general than the
notion of time, and consequently there must be some means of defining it
independently of the consideration of time.
Balmes explains succession, without mentioning time, in the following
manner: “There are things which exclude one another from the same
subject, and there are other things which do not exclude one another from
the same subject. The existence of those things which exclude one another
implies succession. Take a line _ABC_. A body placed in _A_ cannot pass
over to the place _B_ without ceasing to be in _A_, because the situation
_B_ excludes the situation _A_, and in a similar manner the situation
_C_ excludes the situation _B_. If, then, notwithstanding this mutual
exclusion, the three places are really occupied by the same body, there
is succession. This shows that succession is really nothing else than
_the existence of such things as exclude one another_. Hence succession
implies the existence of the thing that excludes, and the non-existence
of the things that are excluded. All variations involve some such
exclusion; hence all variations involve succession.… To perceive the
existence of things which exclude one another is to perceive succession
and time; to measure it is to measure time.” Thus far Balmes.[10]
But, if the _flowing_ duration can be easily conceived as the existence
of such things as exclude one another, the case is very different with
regard to _standing_ duration. For, since we measure all duration by time
or by successive intervals, we can scarcely conceive that there may be
duration without succession. Even the word “permanence” which we employ
in the definition of duration, and which seems to exclude all notion of
change, is always associated in our thought with succession and time.
The difficulty we experience in forming a concept of standing duration
is as great at least as that which we find in conceiving absolute space
without formal extension and parts. In fact, formal extension is to
absolute space what formal succession is to absolute standing duration.
To get over this difficulty we shall have to show that there is a
duration altogether independent of contingent changes, as there is a
space altogether independent of existing bodies, and that the succession
which we observe in the duration of created things is not to be found in
the fundamental reason of its existence, as our imagination suggests, but
only in the changes themselves which we witness in created things.
The following questions are to be answered: Is there any standing
duration? and if so, is it an objective reality, or a mere negation of
movement? Is standing duration anything created? What sort of reality
is it? Is it modified by the existence of creatures? What is a term of
duration? What is relative duration? What is an interval of duration, and
how is it measured? These questions are all parallel to those which we
have answered in our first and second articles on space, and they admit
of a similar solution.
_First question._--“Is there any duration absolutely standing?”
Certainly. For if there is a being whose entity remains always the same
without any intrinsic change, its duration will be absolutely standing.
But there is such a being. For there is, as we have proved, an infinite
reality absolutely immovable and unchangeable--that is, absolute space.
Its permanence is therefore altogether exempt from succession; and
consequently its duration is absolutely standing.
Again: As there is no movement in space without immovable space, so there
is no flowing in duration without standing duration. For as a thing
cannot change its ubication in space unless there be a field for real
ubications between the initial and the final term of the movement, so a
thing cannot change its mode of being (the _when_) in duration, unless
there be a field for real modes of being between the initial and the
final term of its duration. Now, this real field, owing to the fact that
it is, in both cases, prerequired for the possibility of the respective
changes, is something necessarily anterior to, and independent of, any of
such changes. Therefore, as the field of all local movements is anterior
to all movements and excludes movement from itself, so also the field of
all successive durations is anterior to all successivity and therefore
excludes succession.
Although these two arguments suffice to establish our conclusion, what we
have to say concerning the next question will furnish additional evidence
in its support.
_Second question._--“Is standing duration an objective reality or a mere
abstract conception?” We answer that standing duration is an objective
reality as much as absolute space. For, as movement cannot extend in
space, if space is nothing real, so movement cannot extend in duration,
if the field of its extension is nothing real. But we have just seen that
the field through which the duration of movement extends is standing
duration. Therefore standing duration is an objective reality.
Secondly, a mere nothing, or a mere fiction, cannot be the foundation of
real relations. But standing duration is the foundation of all intervals
of real succession, which are real relations. Therefore standing duration
is not a fiction, but an objective reality. The major of this argument
is well known. The minor is proved thus: In all real relations the terms
must communicate with each other through one and the same reality; and
therefore the foundation of a real relation must reach by one and the
same reality the terms related. But the terms of successive duration
are _before_ and _after_. Therefore the foundation of their relation
must reach both _before_ and _after_ with one and the same reality,
and therefore it has neither _before_ nor _after_ in itself. Had it
_before_ and _after_ in itself, its _after_ would not be its _before_;
and thus the reality by which it would reach the terms of succession
would not be the same. It is therefore manifest that the foundation of
all real intervals of succession is a reality whose duration ranges above
succession.
This proof may be presented more concisely as follows: Succession is a
relation between two terms, as _past_ and _present_. Its foundation must
therefore reach all the past as it reaches the present. But what reaches
the past as well as the present, is always present; for if it were
past, it would be no more, and thus it could not reach the past and the
present. Therefore the foundation of succession has no past, but only an
invariable present. Therefore there is a real standing duration, a real
field, over which successive duration extends.
Thirdly, in all intervals of succession the _before_ is connected
with the _after_ through real duration. But this real duration has
in itself neither _before_ nor _after_. For if it had _before_ and
_after_, it would fall under the very genus of relation of which it is
the foundation; which is evidently impossible, because it would then be
the foundation of its own entity. It is therefore plain that the real
connection between the _before_ and the _after_ is made by a reality
which transcends all _before_ and all _after_, and which is nothing else
than absolute standing duration.
Fourthly, if standing duration were not an objective reality, but a mere
fiction or a mere negation of movement, there would be no real length
of duration. For the terms of successive duration are indivisible,
and consequently they cannot give rise to any continuous quantity of
duration, unless something lies between them which affords a real ground
for continuous extension. That the terms of successive duration are
indivisible is evident, because the same term cannot be before itself nor
after itself, but is wholly confined to an indivisible instant. Now, that
according to which an interval of successive duration can be extended
from one of these terms to another, is nothing but absolute and standing
duration. For, if it were flowing, it would pass away with the passing
terms, and thus it would not lie between them, as is necessary in order
to supply a ground for the extension of the interval intercepted. In the
same manner, therefore, as there cannot be distance between two ubicated
points without real absolute space, there cannot be an interval between
two terms in succession without real absolute duration.
A fifth proof of the same truth may be drawn from the reality of the
past. Historical facts are real facts, although they are all past. There
really was a man called Solomon, who really reigned in Jerusalem; there
really was a philosopher called Plato, whose sublime doctrines deserved
for him the surname of Divine; there really was a man called Attila,
surnamed the Scourge of God. These men existed in different intervals
of duration, and they are no more; but their past existence and their
distinct duration constitute three distinct facts, which are _real facts_
even to the present day, and such will remain for ever. Now, how can
we admit that what has wholly ceased to exist in successive duration
is still a real and indelible fact, unless we admit that there is an
absolute duration which is, even now, as truly united with the past as it
is with the present, and to which the past is not past, but perpetually
present? If there is no such duration, then all the past must have been
obliterated and buried in absolute nothingness; for if the succession of
past things extended upon itself alone, without any distinct ground upon
which its flowing could be registered, none of past things could have
left behind a real mark of their existence.
Against this conclusion some will object that the relation between
_before_ and _after_ may be explained by a mere negation of simultaneous
existence. But the objection is futile. For the intervals of successive
duration can be greater or less, whilst no negation can be greater or
less; which shows that the negation of simultaneous existence must not be
confounded with the intervals of succession.
The following objection is more plausible. The duration of movement
suffices to fill up the whole interval of succession and to measure its
extent; and therefore the reality which connects the _before_ with the
_after_ is movement itself, not standing duration. To this we answer
that the duration of movement is essentially successive and relative;
and therefore it requires a real foundation in something standing and
absolute. In fact, although every movement formally extends and measures
its own duration, nevertheless it does not extend it upon itself, but
upon a field extrinsic to itself; and this field is permanently the
same. It is plain that the beginning and the end of movement cannot be
connected in mutual relation through movement alone, because movement is
always _in fieri_, and when it passes through one term of its duration
it loses the actuality it had in the preceding term; so that, when it
reaches its last term, it has nothing left of what it possessed in its
initial term or in any other subsequent term. This suffices to show that,
although the duration of the movement fills up the whole interval, yet,
owing to its very successivity, it cannot be assumed as the ground of the
relation intervening between its successive terms.
_Third question._--“Is absolute and standing duration a created or
an uncreated reality?” This question is easily answered; for, in the
first place, standing duration is the duration of a being altogether
unchangeable; and nothing unchangeable is created. Hence standing
duration is an uncreated reality. On the other hand, all that is created
is changeable and constantly subject to movement; hence all created (that
is, contingent) duration implies succession. Therefore standing duration
is not to be found among created realities. Lastly, standing duration,
as involving in itself all conceivable past and all possible future,
is infinite, and, as forming the ground of all contingent actualities,
is nothing less than the formal possibility of infinite terms of real
successive duration. But such a possibility can be found in God alone.
Therefore the reality of standing duration is in God alone; and we need
not add that it must be uncreated.
_Fourth question._--“What reality, then, is absolute standing duration?”
We answer that this duration is the infinite virtuality or extrinsic
terminability of God’s eternity. For nowhere but in God’s eternity can
we find the reason of the possibility of infinite terms and intervals of
duration. Of course, God’s eternity, considered absolutely _ad intra_,
is nothing else than the immobility of God’s existence; but its virtual
comprehension of all possible terms of successive duration constitutes
the absolute duration of God’s existence, inasmuch as the word “duration”
expresses a virtual extent corresponding to all possible contingent
duration; for God’s duration, though formally simultaneous, virtually
extends beyond all imaginable terms and intervals of contingent duration.
Hence standing duration is the duration of God’s eternity, the first and
fundamental ground of flowing duration, the infinite range through which
the duration of changeable things extend. In other words, the infinite
virtuality of God’s eternity, as equivalent to an infinite length of
time, is _duration_; and as excluding from itself all intrinsic change,
is _standing_ duration. This virtuality of God’s eternity is really
nothing else than its extrinsic terminability; for eternity is conceived
to correspond to all possible differences of time only inasmuch as it can
be compared with the contingent terms by which it can be extrinsically
terminated.
Secondly, if nothing had been created, there would have been no extrinsic
terms capable of extending successive duration; but, since God would
have remained in his eternity, there would have remained the reality in
which all extrinsic terms of duration have their virtual being; and
thus there would have remained, eminently and without formal succession,
in God himself the duration of all the beings possible outside of God.
For he would certainly not have ceased to exist in all the instants of
duration in which creatures have existed; the only change would have
been this: that those instants, owing to a total absence of creatures,
would have lacked their formal denomination of _instants_, and their
formal successivity. Hence, if nothing had been created, there would have
remained infinite real duration without succession, simply because the
virtuality of God’s eternity would have remained in all its perfection.
It is therefore this virtuality that formally constitutes standing
duration.
From this the reader will easily understand that in the concept of
standing duration two notions are involved, viz.: that of _eternity_,
as expressing the standing, and that of its _virtuality_, as connoting
virtual extent. In fact, God’s eternity, absolutely considered, is
simply the actuality of God’s substance, and, as such, does not connote
duration; for God’s substance is not said _to endure_, but simply
_to be_. The formal reason of duration is derived from the extrinsic
terminability of God’s eternity; for the word “duration” conveys the idea
of continuation, and continuation implies succession. Hence it is on
account of its extrinsic terminability to successive terms of duration
that God’s eternity is conceived as equivalent to infinite succession;
for what virtually contains in itself all possible terms and intervals of
succession virtually contains in itself all succession, and can co exist,
without intrinsic change, with all the changes of contingent duration.
Balmes, after defining succession as the existence of such things as
exclude one another, very properly remarks: “If there were a being which
neither excluded any other being nor were excluded by any of them,
that being would co-exist with all beings. Now, one such being exists,
viz.: God, and God alone. Hence theologians do but express a great and
profound truth when they say (though not all, perhaps, fully understand
what they say) that God is present to all times; that to him there is no
succession, no _before_ or _after_; that to him everything is present, is
_Now_.”[11]
We conclude that standing duration is infinite, all-simultaneous,
independent of all contingent things, indivisible, immovable, formally
simple and unextended, but equivalent to infinite intervals of successive
duration, and virtually extending through infinite lengths. This duration
is absolute.
_Fifth question._--“Does the creation of a contingent being in absolute
duration cause any intrinsic change in standing duration?” The answer
is not doubtful; for we have already seen that standing duration is
incapable of intrinsic modifications. Nevertheless, it will not be
superfluous to remark, for the better understanding of this answer, that
the “when” (the _quando_) of a contingent being has the same relation
to the virtuality of God’s eternity as has its “where” (the _ubi_) to
the virtuality of God’s immensity. For, as the “where” of every possible
creature is virtually precontained in absolute space, so is the “when”
of all creatures virtually precontained in absolute duration. Hence the
creation of any number of contingent beings in duration implies nothing
but the _extrinsic_ termination of absolute duration, which accordingly
remains altogether unaffected by the existence in it of any number of
extrinsic terms. The “when” of a contingent being, as contained in
absolute duration, is virtual; it does not become formal except in the
contingent being itself--that is, by extrinsic termination. Thus the
subject of the contingent “when” is not the virtuality of God’s eternity
any more than the subject of the contingent “where” is the virtuality of
God’s immensity.
This shows that the formal “when” of a contingent being is a mere
relativity, or a _respectus_. The formal reason, or the foundation,
of this relativity is the reality through which the contingent being
communicates with absolute standing duration, viz.: the real instant
(_quando_) which is common to both, although not in the same manner;
for it is _virtual_ in standing duration, whilst it is _formal_ in the
extrinsic term. Hence a contingent being, inasmuch as it has existence in
standing duration, is nothing but a term related by its “when” to divine
eternity as existing in a more perfect manner in the same “when.” But,
since the contingent “when” of the creature exclusively belongs to the
creature itself, God’s standing duration receives nothing from it except
a relative extrinsic denomination.
The relation resulting from the existence of a created term in standing
duration consists in this: that the created term by its formal “when”
really imitates the eminent mode of being of God himself in the same
“when.” This relation is called _simultaneousness_.
Simultaneousness is often confounded with presence and with
co-existence. But these three notions, rigorously speaking, differ from
one another. _Presence_ refers to terms in space; _simultaneousness_ to
terms in duration; _co-existence_ to terms both present and simultaneous.
Thus presence and simultaneousness are the constituents of co-existence.
Presence is to be considered as the material constituent, because it
depends on the “where,” which belongs to the thing on account of its
matter or potency; simultaneousness must be considered as the formal
constituent, because it depends on the “when,” which belongs to the thing
on account of its act or of its resulting actuality.
Before we proceed further, we must yet remark that in the same manner as
the infinite virtuality of divine immensity receives distinct extrinsic
denominations from the contingent terms existing in space, and is thus
said to imply _distinct virtualities_, so also the infinite virtuality
of God’s eternity can be said to imply distinct virtualities, owing to
the distinct denominations it receives from distinct terms of contingent
duration. It is for this reason that we can speak of virtualities of
eternity in the plural. Thus when we point out the first instant of any
movement as distinct from any following instant, we consider the flowing
of the contingent “when” from _before_ to _after_ as a passage from one
to another virtuality of standing duration. These virtualities, however,
are not distinct as to their absolute beings, but only as to their
extrinsic termination and denomination; and therefore they are really but
one infinite virtuality. As all that we have said of the virtualities
of absolute space in one of our past articles equally applies to the
virtualities of absolute duration, we need not dwell here any longer on
this point.
_Sixth question._--“In what does the ‘when’ of a contingent being
precisely consist?” From the preceding considerations it is evident
that the “when” of a contingent being may be understood in two manners,
viz., either _objectively_ or _subjectively_. Objectively considered,
the “when” is nothing else than _a simple and indivisible term in
duration_ formally marked out in it by the actuality of the contingent
being. We say _a simple and indivisible term_, because the actuality
of the contingent being by which it is determined involves neither
past nor future, neither _before_ nor _after_, but only its present
existence, which, as such, is confined to an indivisible _Now_. Hence
we do not agree with those philosophers who confound the _quando_ with
the _tempus_--that is, the “when” with the extent of flowing duration.
We admit with these philosophers that the “when” of contingent things
extends through movement from _before_ to _after_, and draws, so to say,
a continuous line in duration; but we must remind them that the _before_
and the _after_ are distinct modes of being in duration, and that every
term of duration designable between them is a distinct “when” independent
of every other “when,” either preceding or following; which shows that
the _tempus_ implies an uninterrupted series of distinct “whens,” and
therefore cannot be considered as synonymous with _quando_.
If the “when” is considered subjectively--that is, as an appurtenance of
the subject of which it is predicated--it may be defined as _the mode of
being of a contingent thing in duration_. This mode consists of a mere
relativity; for it results from the extrinsic termination of absolute
duration, as already explained. Hence the “when” is not _received_ in
the subject of which it is predicated, and does not _inhere_ in it, but,
like all other relativities and connotations, simply connects it with its
correlative, and intervenes or lies between the one and the other.
But, although it consists of a mere relativity, the “when” still admits
of being divided into _absolute_ and _relative_, according as it is
conceived absolutely as something real in nature, or compared with
some other “when”; for, as we have already explained when treating of
ubications, relative entities may be considered both as to what they are
in themselves, and as to what they are to one another.
If the “when” is considered simply as a termination of standing duration,
without regard for anything else, it is called _absolute_, and is defined
as _the mode of being of a thing in absolute duration_. This absolute
“when” is an _essential mode_ of the contingent being no less than its
dependence from the first cause, and is altogether immutable so long
as the contingent being exists; for, on the one hand, the contingent
being cannot exist but within the domain of divine eternity, and, on the
other, it cannot have different modes of being with regard to it, as the
standing duration of eternity is all uniform in its infinite virtual
extension, and the contingent being, however much we may try to vary its
place in duration, must always be in the very middle of eternity. Hence
the absolute “when” is altogether unchangeable.
If the “when” of a contingent being is compared with that of another
contingent being in order to ascertain their mutual relation, then the
“when” is called _relative_, and, as such, it may be defined as _the mode
of terminating a relation in duration_. This “when” is changeable, not
in its intrinsic entity, but in its relative formality; and it is only
under this formality that the “when” (_quando_) can be ranked among the
predicamental accidents; for this changeable formality is the only thing
in it which bears the stamp of an accidental entity.
The _before_ and the _after_ of the same contingent being are considered
as two distinct relative terms, because the being to which they refer,
when existing in the _after_, excludes the _before_; though the absolute
“when” of one and the same being is one term only. But of this we shall
treat more fully in the sequel.
_Seventh question._--“What is relative duration?” Here we meet again the
same difficulty which we have encountered in explaining relative space;
for in the same manner as relations in space are usually confounded
with space itself, so are the intervals in duration confounded with the
duration which is the ground of their extension. But, as the reasonings
by which we have established the precise notion of relative space can be
easily brought to bear on the present subject by the reader himself, we
think we must confine ourselves to a brief and clear statement of the
conclusions drawn from those reasonings, as applied to duration.
Relative duration is _the duration through which any movement extends_;
that is, the duration through which the “when” of anything in movement
glides from _before_ to _after_, and by which the _before_ and the
_after_ are linked in mutual relation. Now, the duration through which
movement extends is not exactly the duration of the movement itself, but
the ground upon which the movement extends its own duration; because
movement has nothing actual but a flowing instant, and therefore it has
no duration within itself except by reference to an extrinsic ground
through which it successively extends. This ground, as we have already
shown, is standing duration. And therefore relative duration is nothing
else than _standing duration as extrinsically terminated by distinct
terms_, or, what amounts to the same terminated by one term which, owing
to any kind of movement, acquires distinct and opposite formalities. This
conclusion is based on the principle that the foundation of all relations
between _before_ and _after_ must be something absolute, having in itself
neither _before_ nor _after_, and therefore absolutely standing. This
principle is obviously true. The popular notion, on the contrary, that
relative duration is the duration of movement, is based on the assumption
that movement itself engenders duration--which assumption is false;
for we cannot even conceive movement without presupposing the absolute
duration upon which the movement has to trace the line of its flowing
existence.
Thus relative duration is called relative, not because it is itself
related, but because it is the ground through which the extrinsic
terms are related. It is actively, not passively, relative; it is the
_ratio_, not the _rationatum_, the foundation, not the result, of the
relativities. In other terms, relative duration is absolute as to its
entity, and relative as to the extrinsic denomination derived from the
relations of which it is the formal reason. Duration, as absolute, may
be styled “the region of all possible _whens_,” just as absolute space is
styled “the region of all possible ubications”; and, as relative, it may
be styled “the region of all possible succession,” just as relative space
is styled “the region of all local movements.” Absolute standing duration
and absolute space are the ground of the _here_ and _now_ as statical
terms. Relative standing duration and relative space are the ground of
the _here_ and _now_ as gliding--that is, as dynamically considered.
_Eighth question._--“What is an interval of duration?” It is a relation
existing between two opposite terms of succession--that is, between
_before_ and _after_. An interval of duration is commonly considered as a
continuous extension; yet it is primarily a simple relation by which the
extension of the flowing from _before_ to _after_ is formally determined.
Nevertheless, since the “when” cannot acquire the opposite formalities,
_before_ and _after_, without continuous movement, all interval of
duration implies movement, and therefore may be considered also as a
continuous quantity. Under this last aspect, the interval of duration is
nothing else than the duration of the movement from _before_ to _after_.
We have already noticed that the duration of movement, or the interval
of duration, is not to be confounded with the duration through which the
movement extends. But as, in the popular language, the one as well as the
other is termed “relative duration,” we would suggest that the duration
through which the movement extends might be called _fundamental_ relative
duration, whilst the relation which constitutes an interval between
_before_ and _after_ might be called _resultant_ relative duration.
The philosophical necessity of this distinction is obvious, first,
because the _standing_ duration, through which movement extends, must not
be confounded with the _flowing_ duration of movement; secondly, because
the relation and its foundation are not the same thing, and, as we have
explained at length when treating of relative space, to confound the one
with the other leads to Pantheism. Intervals of relation are not _parts_
of absolute duration, though they are so conceived by many, but they are
mere relations, as we have stated. Absolute duration is all standing,
it has no parts, and it cannot be divided into parts. What is called an
interval _of_ duration should rather be called an interval _in_ duration;
for it is not a portion of standing duration, but an extrinsic result;
it is not a length of absolute duration, but the length of the movement
extending through that duration; it is not a divisible extension, but the
ground on which movement acquires its divisible extension from _before_
to _after_. In the smallest conceivable interval of duration there is
God, with all his eternity. To affirm that intervals of duration are
distinct durations would be to cut God’s eternity to pieces by giving it
a distinct being in really distinct intervals. Hence it is necessary to
concede that, whilst the intervals are distinct, the duration on which
they have their foundation is one and the same. The only duration which
can be safely confounded with those intervals is the flowing duration of
the movement by which they are measured. This is the duration which can
be considered as a continuous quantity divisible into parts; and this is
the duration which we should style “_resultant_ relative duration,” to
avoid all danger of error or equivocation.
The objections which can be made against this manner of viewing things do
not much differ from those which we have solved in our second article on
space; and therefore we do not think it necessary to make a new answer
to them. The reader himself will be able to see what the objections are,
and how they can be solved, by simply substituting the words “eternity,”
“duration,” etc., for the words “immensity,” “space,” etc., in the
article referred to.
Yet a special objection can be made against the preceding doctrine about
the duration of movement, independently of those which regard relations
in space. It may be presented under this form. “The foundation of the
relation between _before_ and _after_ is nothing else than movement
itself. It is therefore unnecessary and unphilosophical to trace the
duration of movement to the virtuality of God’s eternity as its extrinsic
foundation.” The antecedent of this argument may be proved thus: “That
thing is the foundation of the relation which gives to its terms their
relative being--that is, in our case, their opposite formalities,
_before_ and _after_. But movement alone gives to the _when_ these
opposite formalities. Therefore movement alone is the foundation of
successive duration.”
We answer that the antecedent of the first argument is absolutely false.
As to the syllogism which comes next, we concede the major, but we deny
the minor. For it is plain that movement cannot give to the absolute
_when_ the relative formalities _before_ and _after_, except by flowing
through absolute duration, without which it is impossible for the
movement to have its successive duration. And surely, if the movement has
no duration but that which it borrows from the absolute duration through
which it extends, the foundation of its duration from _before_ to _after_
can be nothing else than the same absolute duration through which the
movement acquires its _before_ and _after_. Now, this absolute duration
is the virtuality of God’s eternity, as we have proved. It is therefore
both philosophical and necessary to trace the duration of movement to
the virtuality of God’s eternity, as its extrinsic foundation. That
movement is also necessary to constitute the relation between _before_
and _after_, we fully admit; for there cannot be _before_ and _after_
without movement. But it does not follow from this that movement is
the _foundation_ of the relation; it merely follows that movement is
a _condition_ necessary to give to the absolute _when_ two distinct
actualities, according to which it may be compared with itself on the
ground of standing duration. For, as every relation demands two opposite
terms, the same absolute _when_ must acquire two opposite formalities,
that it may be related to itself.
The only other objection which may perhaps be made against our
conclusions is the following: The foundation of a real relation is that
reality through which the terms related communicate with one another.
Now, evidently, the _before_ and the _after_, which are the terms of
the relation in question, communicate with one another through the same
absolute _when_; for they are the same absolute _when_ under two opposite
formalities. Hence it follows that the foundation of the relation
between _before_ and _after_ is nothing else than the absolute _when_ of
a moving being.
To this we answer that the foundation of the relation is not all reality
through which the terms related communicate with one another, but only
that reality by the common termination of which they become formally
related to one another. Hence, since the _before_ and the _after_ do
not receive their relative formalities from the absolute _when_, it
is idle to pretend that the absolute _when_ is the foundation of the
interval of duration. The _before_ and the _after_ communicate with the
same absolute _when_ not as a formal, but as a material, cause of their
existence--that is, inasmuch as the same _when_ is the subject, not the
reason, of both formalities. The only relation to which the absolute
_when_ can give a foundation is one of identity with itself in all the
extent of its flowing duration. But such a relation presupposes, instead
of constituting, an interval in duration. And therefore it is manifest
that the absolute _when_ is not the foundation of the relation between
_before_ and _after_.
Having thus answered the questions proposed, and given the solution of
the few difficulties objected, we must now say a few words about the
_division_ and _measurement_ of relative duration, whether fundamental or
resultant.
Fundamental or standing duration is divided into _real_ and _imaginary_.
This division cannot regard the entity of standing duration, which is
unquestionably real, as we have proved. It regards the reality or the
unreality of the extrinsic terms conceived as having a relation in
duration. The true notion of real, contrasted with imaginary, duration,
is the following: Standing duration is called _real_ when it is _really_
relative, viz., when it is extrinsically terminated by real terms
between which it founds a real relation; on the contrary, it is called
_imaginary_ when the extrinsic terms do not exist in nature, but only in
our imagination; for, in such a case, standing duration is not really
terminated and does not found real relations, but both the terminations
and the relations are simply a figment of our imagination. Thus standing
duration, as containing none but imaginary relations, may justly be
called “imaginary,” though in an absolute sense it is intrinsically real.
Accordingly, the _indefinite_ duration which we imagine when we carry
our thought beyond the creation of the world, and which is also called
“imaginary,” is not absolute but relative duration, and is not imaginary
in itself, but only as to its denomination of relative, because, in the
absence of all real terms, there can be none but imaginary relations.
It is therefore unphilosophical to confound imaginary and indefinite
duration with absolute and infinite duration. This latter is not an
object of imagination, but of the intellect alone. Imagination cannot
conceive duration, except in connection with some movement from _before_
to _after_; hence absolute and infinite duration, which has no _before_
and no _after_, is altogether beyond the reach of imagination. Indeed,
our intellectual conception of infinite standing duration is always
accompanied in our minds by a representation of indefinite time; but
this depends, as we have stated in speaking of space, on the well-known
connection of our imaginative and intellectual operations, inasmuch
as our imagination strives to follow the intellect, and to represent
after its own manner what the intellect conceives in a totally different
manner. It was by confounding the objective notion of duration with our
subjective manner of imagining it that Kant came to the conclusion that
duration was nothing but a subjective form or a subjective condition,
under which all intuitions are possible in us. This conclusion is
evidently false; but its refutation, to be successful, must be based on
the objectivity of absolute standing duration, without which, as we have
shown, there can be no field for real and objective succession.
Resultant relative duration--that is, an interval of flowing
duration--admits of the same division into _real_ and _imaginary_. It
is real when a real continuous flowing connects the _before_ with the
_after_; in all other suppositions it will be imaginary. It may be
remarked that the “real continuous flowing” may be either intrinsic or
extrinsic. Thus, if God had created nothing but a simple angel, there
would have been no other flowing duration than a continuous succession
of intellectual operations connecting the _before_ with the _after_ in
the angel himself, and thus his duration would have been measured by a
series of intrinsic changes. It is evident that in this case one absolute
_when_ suffices to extend the interval of duration; for by its gliding
from _before_ to _after_ it acquires opposite formalities through which
it can be relatively opposed to itself as the subject and the term of
the relation. If, on the contrary, we consider the interval of duration
between two distinct beings--say Cæsar and Napoleon--then the real
continuous flowing by which such an interval is measured is extrinsic to
the terms compared; for the _when_ of Cæsar is distinct from, and does
not reach, that of Napoleon; which shows that their respective _whens_
have no intrinsic connection, and that the succession comprised between
those _whens_ must have consisted of a series of changes extrinsic to
the terms compared. It may seem difficult to conceive how an interval of
continuous succession can result between two terms of which the one does
not attain to the other; for, as a line in space must be drawn by the
movement of a single point, so it seems that a length in duration must be
extended by the flowing of a single _when_ from _before_ to _after_. The
truth is that the interval between the _whens_ of two distinct beings is
not obtained by comparing the _when_ of the one with that of the other,
but by resorting to the _when_ of some other being which has extended its
continuous succession from the one to the other. Thus, when Cæsar died,
the earth was revolving on its axis, and it continued to revolve without
interruption up to the existence of Napoleon, thus extending the duration
of its movement from a _when_ corresponding to Cæsar’s death to a _when_
corresponding to Napoleon’s birth; and this duration, wholly extrinsic to
Cæsar and Napoleon, measures the interval between them.
As all intervals of duration extend from _before_ to _after_, there
can be no interval between co-existent beings, as is evident. In the
same manner as two beings whose ubications coincide cannot be distant
in space, so two beings whose _whens_ are simultaneous cannot form an
interval of duration.
All real intervals of duration regard the past; for in the past alone
can we find a real _before_ and a real _after_. The present gives no
interval, as we have just stated, but only simultaneousness. The future
is real only potentially--that is, it will be real, but it is not yet.
What has never been, and never will be, is merely imaginary. To this
last class belong all the intervals of duration corresponding to those
conditional events which did not happen, owing to the non-fulfilment of
the conditions on which their reality depended.
As to the measurement of flowing duration a few words will suffice. The
_when_ considered absolutely is incapable of measuring an interval of
duration, for the reason that the _when_ is unextended, and therefore
unproportionate to the mensuration of a continuous interval; for the
measure must be of the same kind with the thing to be measured. Just
as a continuous line cannot be made up of unextended points, so cannot
a continuous interval be made up of indivisible instants; hence, as a
line is divisible only into smaller and smaller lines, by which it can
be measured, so also an interval of duration is divisible only into
smaller and smaller intervals, and is measured by the same. These smaller
intervals, being continuous, are themselves divisible and mensurable by
other intervals of less duration, and these other intervals are again
divisible and mensurable; so that, from the nature of the thing, it is
impossible to reach an absolute measure of duration, and we must rest
satisfied with a relative one, just as in the case of a line and of any
other continuous quantity. The smallest unit or measure of duration
commonly used is the second, or sixtieth part of a minute.
But, since continuous quantities are divisible _in infinitum_, it may be
asked, what prevents us from considering a finite interval of duration
as containing an infinite multitude of infinitesimal units of duration?
If nothing prevents us, then in the infinitesimal unit we shall have
the true and absolute measure of duration. We answer that nothing
prevents such a conception; but the mensuration of a finite interval by
infinitesimal units would never supply us the means of determining the
relative lengths of two intervals of duration. For, if every interval is
a sum of infinite terms, and is so represented, how can we decide which
of those intervals is the greater, since we cannot count the infinite?
Mathematicians, in all dynamical questions, express the conditions of the
movement in terms of infinitesimal quantities, and consider every actual
instant which connects the _before_ with the _after_ as an infinitesimal
interval of duration in the same manner as they consider every shifting
ubication as an infinitesimal interval of space. But when they pass from
infinitesimal to finite quantities by integration between determinate
limits, they do not express the finite intervals in infinitesimal terms,
but in terms of a finite unit, viz., a second of time; and this shows
that, even in high mathematics, the infinitesimal is not taken as the
measure of the finite.
Since infinitesimals are considered as evanescent quantities, the
question may be asked whether they are still conceivable as quantities.
We have no intention of discussing here the philosophical grounds of
infinitesimal calculus, as we may have hereafter a better opportunity
of examining such an interesting subject; but, so far as infinitesimals
of duration are concerned, we answer that they are still quantities,
though they bear no comparison with finite duration. What mathematicians
call an infinitesimal of time is nothing else rigorously than the
flowing of an actual “when” from _before_ to _after_. The “when” as
such is no quantity, but its flowing is. However narrow the compass
within which it may be reduced, the flowing implies a relation between
_before_ and _after_; hence every instant of successive duration,
inasmuch as it actually links its immediate _before_ with its immediate
_after_, partakes of the nature of successive duration, and therefore
of continuous quantity. Nor does it matter that infinitesimals are
called _evanescent_ quantities. They indeed vanish, as compared with
finite quantities; but the very fact of their vanishing proves that they
are still something when they are in the act of vanishing. Sir Isaac
Newton, after saying in his _Principia_ that he intends to reduce the
demonstration of a series of propositions to the first and last sums and
ratios of nascent and evanescent quantities, propounds and solves this
very difficulty as follows: “Perhaps it may be objected that there is no
ultimate proportion of evanescent quantities; because the proportion,
before the quantities have vanished, is not the ultimate, and, when they
are vanished, is none. But by the same argument it may be alleged that
a body arriving at a certain place, and there stopping, has no ultimate
velocity; because the velocity, before the body comes to the place, is
not its ultimate velocity; when it has arrived, is none. But the answer
is easy; for by the ultimate velocity is meant that with which the body
is moved, neither _before_ it arrives at its last place and the motion
ceases, nor _after_, but at the _very instant_ it arrives; that is,
the velocity with which the body arrives at its last place, and with
which the motion ceases. And in like manner, by the ultimate ratio of
evanescent quantities is to be understood the ratio of the quantities,
not before they vanish, not afterwards, but with which they vanish. In
like manner, the first ratio of nascent quantities is that with which
they begin to be.” From this answer, which is so clear and so deep, it
is manifest that infinitesimals are real quantities. Whence we infer
that every instant of duration which actually flows from _before_ to
_after_ marks out a real infinitesimal interval of duration that might
serve as a unit of measure for the mensuration of all finite intervals
of succession, were it not that we cannot reckon up to infinity.
Nevertheless, it does not follow that an infinitesimal duration is an
absolute unit of duration; for it is still continuous, even in its
infinite smallness; and accordingly it is still divisible and mensurable
by other units of a lower standard. Thus it is clear that the measurement
of flowing duration, and indeed of all other continuous quantity, cannot
be made except by some arbitrary and conventional unit.
THE STARS.
As I gaze in silent wonder
On the countless stars of night,
Looking down in mystic stillness
With their soft and magic light
Seem they from my eyes retreating
With their vast and bright array,
Till they into endless distance
Almost seem to fade away.
And my thoughts are carried with them
To their far-off realms of light;
Yet they seem retreating ever,
Ever into endless night.
Whither leads that silent army,
With its noiseless tread and slow?
And those glittering bands, who are they?
Thus my thoughts essay to know.
But my heart the secret telleth
That to thee, my God, they guide;
That they are thy gleaming watchmen,
Guarding round thy palace wide.
Then, when shall those gates be opened
To receive my yearning soul,
Where its home shall be for ever,
While the countless ages roll?
Thou alone, O God! canst know it:
Till then doth my spirit pine.
Father! keep thy child from falling,
Till for ever I am thine.
WILLIAM TELL AND ALTORF.
Brunnen, the “fort of Schwytz,” standing at that angle of the lake of
Lucerne where it turns abruptly towards the very heart of the Alps,
has always been a central halting-place for travellers; but since the
erection of its large hotel the attraction has greatly increased. We
found the Waldstätterhof full to overflowing, and rejoiced that, as
usual, we had wisely ordered our rooms beforehand. Our surprise was
great, as we threaded the mazes of the _table-d’hôte_ room, to see Herr
H---- come forward and greet us cordially. We expected, it is true,
to meet him here, but not until the eve of the feast at Einsiedeln,
whither he had promised to accompany us. An unforeseen event, however,
had brought him up the lake sooner, and he therefore came on to Brunnen,
in the hope of finding us. A few minutes sufficed to make him quit his
place at the centre table and join us at a small one, where supper had
been prepared for our party, and allow us to begin a description of our
wanderings since we parted from him on the quay at Lucerne. Yes, “begin”
is the proper word; for before long the harmony was marred by George,
who, with his usual impetuosity, and in spite of Caroline’s warning
frowns and Anna’s and my appealing looks, betrayed our disappointment at
having missed the Hermitage at Ranft, and the reproaches we had heaped on
Herr H----’s head for having mismanaged the programme in that particular.
The cheery little man, whose eyes had just begun to glisten with
delight, grew troubled.
“I am _so_ sorry!” he exclaimed. “But the ladies were not so enthusiastic
about Blessed Nicholas when I saw them. And as for you, Mr. George, I
never could have dreamt you would have cared for the Hermit.”
“Oh! but _he_ is a real historical character, you see, about whom there
can be no doubt--very unlike your sun-god, your mythical hero, William
Tell!” replied George.
“Take care! take care! young gentleman,” said Herr H----, laughing.
“Remember you are now in Tell’s territory, and he may make you rue the
consequences of deriding him! Don’t imagine, either, that your modern
historical critics have left even Blessed Nicholas alone! Oh! dear, no.”
“But he is vouched for by documents,” retorted George.“No one can doubt
them.”
“Your critics of this age would turn and twist and doubt anything,” said
Herr H----. “They cannot deny his existence nor the main features of his
life; yet some have gone so far as to pretend to doubt the most authentic
fact in it--his presence at the Diet of Stanz--saying that _probably_ he
never went there, but only wrote a letter to the deputies. So much for
their criticism and researches! After that specimen you need not wonder
that I have no respect for them. But I am in an unusually patriotic
mood to-day; for I have just come from a meeting at Beckenried, on
the opposite shore, in Unterwalden. It was that which brought me here
before my appointment with you. It was a meeting of one of our Catholic
societies in these cantons, which assembled to protest against the
revision of the constitution contemplated next spring. Before separating
it was suggested that they should call a larger one at the Rütli, to
evoke the memories of the past and conform themselves to the pattern of
our forefathers.”
“Why do you so much object to a revision?” inquired Mr. C----. “Surely
reform must sometimes be necessary.”
“Sometimes, of course, but not at present, my dear sir. ‘Revision’
nowadays simply means radicalism and the suppression of our religion and
our religious rights and privileges. It is a word which, for that reason
alone, is at all times distasteful to these cantons. Moreover, it savors
too much of French ideas and doctrines, thoroughly antagonistic to all
our principles and feelings. Everything French is loathed in these parts,
especially in Unterwalden, in spite of--or I should perhaps rather say in
consequence of--all they suffered from that nation in 1798.”
“I can understand that,” said Mr. C----, “with the memory of the massacre
in the church at Stanz always in their minds.”
“Well, yes; but that was only one act in the tragedy. The desolation they
caused in that part of the country was fearful. Above all, their total
want of religion at that period can never be forgotten.”
“As for myself,” remarked Mr. C----, “though not a Catholic, I confess
that I should much rather rely on the upright instincts of this pious
population than on the crooked teachings of our modern philosophers. I
have always noticed in every great political crisis that the instincts of
the pure and simple-minded have something of an inspiration about them;
they go straight to the true principles where a Macchiavelli is often at
fault.” Herr H---- completely agreed with him, and the conversation soon
became a deep and serious discussion on the tendencies of modern politics
in general, so that it was late that evening before our party separated.
The first sound that fell upon my ear next morning was the splashing of
a steamer hard by. It had been so dark upon our arrival the night before
that we had not altogether realized the close proximity of the hotel to
the lake, and it was an unexpected pleasure to find my balcony almost
directly over the water, like the stern gallery of a ship of war. A
small steamer certainly was approaching from the upper end of the lake,
with a time-honored old diligence in the bows and a few travellers,
tired-looking and dust-stained, scattered on the deck, very unlike the
brilliant throngs that pass to and fro during the late hours of the
day. But this early morning performance was one of real business, and
the magical words “Post” and “St. Gothard,” which stood out in large
letters on the yellow panels of the diligence, told at once of more than
mere pleasure-seeking. What joy or grief, happiness or despair, might
not this old-fashioned vehicle be at this moment conveying to unknown
thousands! It was an abrupt transition, too, to be thus brought from
pastoral Sarnen and Sachslen into immediate contact with the mighty Alps.
Of their grandeur, however, nothing could be seen; for, without rain
or wind, a thick cloud lay low upon the lake, more like a large flat
ceiling than aught else. Yet, for us, it had its own peculiar interest,
being nothing more nor less than the great, heavy, soft mass which we
had noticed hanging over the lake every morning when looking down from
Kaltbad, whilst we, revelling in sunshine and brightness above, were
pitying the poor inhabitants along the shore beneath. There was a kind
of superiority, therefore, in knowing what it meant, and in feeling
confident that it would not last long. And, as we expected, it did clear
away whilst we sat at our little breakfast-table in the window, revealing
in all its magnificence the glorious view from this point up the Bay of
Uri, which we have elsewhere described. Huge mountains seemed to rise
vertically up out of the green waters; verdant patches were dotted here
and there on their rugged sides; and, overtopping all, shone the glacier
of the Urirothstock, more dazzlingly white and transparent than we had
ever yet beheld it.
“Now, ladies!” exclaimed Herr H----, “I hope you have your Schiller
ready; for the Rütli is yonder, though you will see it better by and by.”
“Why, I thought you disapproved of Schiller,” retorted the irrepressibly
argumentative George.
“To a certain degree, no doubt,” replied Herr H----. “But nothing can
be finer than his _William Tell_ as a whole. My quarrel with it is that
the real William Tell would have fared much better were it not for this
play, and especially for the opera. They have both made the subject so
common--so _banale_, as the French say--that the world has grown tired
of it, and for this reason alone is predisposed to reject our hero.
Besides, the real history of the Revolution is so fine that I prefer it
in its simplicity. Schiller is certainly true to its spirit, but details
are frequently different. For instance, the taking of the Castle of the
Rossberg, which you passed on the lake of Alpnach: Schiller has converted
that into a most sensational scene, whereas the true story is far more
characteristic. That was the place where a young girl admitted her
betrothed and his twelve Confederate friends by a rope-ladder at night,
which enabled them to seize the castle and imprison the garrison “without
shedding a drop of blood or injuring the property of the Habsburgs,” in
exact conformity with their oath on the Rütli. You will often read of
the loves of Jägeli and Ameli in Swiss poetry. They are great favorites,
and, in my opinion, far more beautiful than the fictitious romance
of Rudenz and Bertha. And so in many other cases. But every one does
not object to Schiller as I do; for in 1859, when his centenary was
celebrated in Germany, the Swiss held a festival here on the Rütli,
and subsequently erected a tablet on that large natural pyramidal rock
you see at the corner opposite. It is called the Wytenstein, and you
can read the large gilt words with a glass. It is laconic enough, too;
see: ‘To Frederick Schiller--The Singer of Tell--The Urcantone.’ The
original cantons! Miss Caroline! let me congratulate you on being at last
in the ‘Urschweiz’--the cradle of Switzerland,” continued Herr H----,
as we sauntered out on the quay, pointing at the same time to some bad
frescos of Swen and Suiter on a warehouse close by. Stauffacher, Fürst,
and Van der Halden also figured on the walls--the presiding geniuses
of this region. “Brunnen is in no way to be despised, I assure you,
ladies; you are treading on venerated soil. This is the very spot that
witnessed the foundation of the Confederacy, where the oath was taken
by the representatives of Uri, Schwytz, and Unterwalden the day after
the battle of Morgarten. They swore ‘to die, each for all and all for
each’--the oath which made Switzerland renowned, and gave the name of
‘Ridsgenossen,’ or ‘oath-participators,’ to its inhabitants. The document
is still kept in the archives at Schwytz, with another dated August 1,
1291. Aloys von Reding raised his standard against the French here in
1798; and he was quite right in beginning his resistance to them at
Brunnen. It is full of memories to us Swiss, and is a most central point,
as you may see, between all these cantons. The increase in the hotels
tells what a favorite region it also is with tourists.”
On this point Mr. and Mrs. C----’s astonishment was unbounded. They
had passed a fortnight at Brunnen in 1861, at a small inn with scanty
accommodation, now replaced by the large and comfortable Waldstätterhof,
situated in one of the most lovely spots imaginable, at the angle of
the lake, one side fronting the Bay of Uri and the other looking up
towards Mount Pilatus. The _pension_ of Seelisberg existed on the heights
opposite even then--only, however, as a small house, instead of the
present extensive establishment, with its pretty woods and walks; but
Axenstein and the second large hotel now building near it, with the
splendid road leading up to them, had not been thought of. The only
communication by land between Schwytz and Fluelen, in those days, was
a mule-path along the hills, precipitous and dangerous in many parts.
The now famed Axenstrasse was not undertaken until 1862; and is said to
have been suggested by the French war in Italy. With the old Swiss dread
of the French still at heart, the Federal government took alarm at that
first military undertaking on the part of Napoleon III., and, seeing
the evil of having no communication between these cantons in case of
attack, at once took the matter seriously in hand. This great engineering
achievement was opened to the public in 1868. It looked most inviting
to-day, and we quickly decided to make use of it by driving along it to
Fluelen, and thence to Altorf, returning in the evening by the steamer.
Some were anxious to visit the Rütli; but Mr. and Mrs. C---- had been
there before, and knew that it was more than an hour’s expedition
by boat, so that the two excursions on the same day would be quite
impossible; consequently, we chose the longer one.
It was just ten o’clock when we started; Mrs. C----, Caroline, Herr
H----, and myself in one carriage, with George on the box, the others
following us in a second vehicle. We had not proceeded far when Herr
H---- made us halt to look at the Rütli, on the shore right opposite. We
distinctly saw that it was a small meadow, formed by earth fallen from
above on a ledge of rock under the precipitous heights of Seelisberg,
and now enclosed by some fine chestnut and walnut trees. Truly, it was
a spot fitted for the famous scene. So unapproachable is it, except by
water, that even that most enterprising race--Swiss hotel-keepers--have
hitherto failed to destroy it. Some years ago, however, it narrowly
escaped this fate; for Herr Müller, of Seelisberg, is said to have been
on the point of building a _pension_ on the great meadow. But no sooner
did this become known than a national subscription was at once raised,
the government purchased it, and now it has become inalienable national
property for ever.
“You may well be proud of your country, Herr H----,” exclaimed Mr.
C---- from the other carriage. “I always look on that tiny spot with
deep reverence as the true cradle of freedom. Look at it well, George!
It witnessed that wonderful oath by which these mountaineers bound
themselves ‘to be faithful to each other, just and merciful to their
oppressors’--the only known example of men--and these men peasants,
too--binding themselves, in the excitement of revolt, not to take revenge
on their oppressors.”
“Quite sublime!” ejaculated George.
“Well, it has borne good fruit,” returned Herr H---- in gleeful tones;
“for here we are still free! Except on the one occasion of the French in
’98, no foreign troops have ever invaded this part of Switzerland since
those days. Yes, there are three springs at the Rütli, supposed to have
jutted forth where the three heroes stood; but I do not pledge my word
for that,” he answered smilingly to Caroline, “nor for the legend which
says that their spirits sleep in the rocky vale under Seelisberg, ready
to come forth and lead the people in moments of danger.”
“I hope their slumbers may never be disturbed,” she replied; “but I wish
some one would prevent these cattle from frightening the horses,” as a
large drove swept past our carriages, making our steeds nervous. Splendid
animals they were, with beautiful heads, straight backs, light limbs, and
of a grayish mouse color.
“All of the celebrated Schwytz breed,” said Herr H----. “This part of
the country is renowned for its cattle. Each of these probably cost from
five to six hundred francs. The Italians take great advantage of this new
road, and come in numbers to buy them at this season, when the cattle
are returning from the mountains. These are going across the St. Gothard
to Lombardy. Those of Einsiedeln are still considered the best. Do you
remember, Miss Caroline, that the first mention of German authority in
this land was occasioned by a dispute between the shepherds of Schwytz
and the abbots of Einsiedeln about their pasturage--the emperor having
given a grant of land to the abbey, while the Schwytzers had never heard
of his existence even, and refused to obey his majesty’s orders?”
“Ah! what historical animals: that quite reconciles me to them,” she
answered, as we drove on again amongst a group that seemed very uneasy
under their new masters, whose sweet language George averred had no power
over them.
Who can describe the exquisite beauty of our drive?--winding in and
out, sometimes through a tunnel; at others along the edge of the high
precipice from which a low parapet alone separated us; at another passing
through the village of Sisikon, which years ago suffered severely from a
fragment of rock fallen from the Frohnalp above. Time flew rapidly, and
one hour and a half had glided by, without our perceiving it, when we
drew up before the beautiful little inn of “Tell’s Platte.”
“But there is no Platform here,” cried George. “We are hundreds of feet
above the lake. The critics are right, Herr H----, decidedly right! I
knew it from the beginning. How can you deny it?”
“Wait, my young friend! Don’t be so impatient. Just come into the inn
first--I should like you to see the lovely view from it; and then we can
look for the Platform.” Saying which, he led us upstairs, on through the
_salon_ to its balcony on the first floor. This is one of the smaller
inns of that olden type which boast the enthusiastic attachment of
regular customers, and display with pride that old institution--the
“strangers’ book”--which has completely vanished from the monster hotels.
It lay open on the table as we passed, and every one instinctively
stopped to examine it.
“The dear old books!” exclaimed Mrs. C----. “How they used to amuse me in
Switzerland! I have missed them so much this time. Their running fire of
notes, their polyglot verses--a sort of album and scrap-book combined,
full, too, of praise or abuse of the last hotel, as the humor might be.”
“Yes,” said Mr. C----, “I shall never forget the preface to one--an
imprecation on whoever might be tempted to let his pen go beyond bounds.
I learned it by rote:
“May the mountain spirits disturb his slumbers;
May his limbs be weary, and his feet sore;
May the innkeepers give him tough mutton and
Sour wine, and charge him for it as though he were
Lord Sir John, M.P.!”
“How very amusing!--a perfect gem in its way,” cried Anna. “Lord Sir
John, M.P., must have been the model of large-pursed Britons in his
time.” Here, however, everything seemed to be _couleur de rose_. The
book’s only fault was its monotony of praise. Two sisters keep the hotel,
and “nowhere,” said its devoted friends, “could one find better fare,
better attendance, and greater happiness than at Tell’s Platform.” The
testimony of a young couple confessedly on their bridal tour had no
weight. We know how, at that moment, a barren rock transforms itself into
a paradise for them; but three maiden ladies had passed six weeks of
unalloyed enjoyment here once upon a time, and had returned often since;
English clergymen and their families found no words of praise too strong;
while German students and professors indulged in rhapsodical language not
to be equalled out of fatherland.
Duchesses, princesses, and Lords Sir John, M.P., were alone wanting
amongst the present guests. “But they come,” said Herr H----, “by the
mid-day steamers, dine and rest here awhile, and return in the evenings
to the larger hotels in other places.”
And standing on the balcony of the _salon_, facing all the grand
mountains, with the green lake beneath, it truly seemed a spot made for
brides and bridegrooms, for love and friendship. So absorbed were we in
admiration of the enchanting view that we did not at first notice two
little maidens sitting at the far end. They were pretty children, of nine
and thirteen, daughters of an English family stopping here, and their
countenances brightened as they heard our exclamation of delight; for
Tell’s Platte was to them a paradise. Like true Britons, however, they
said nothing until George and Caroline commenced disputing about the
scenery. Comment then was irresistible. “No,” said the youngest, “that
is the Isenthal,” pointing to a valley beneath the hills opposite; “and
that the Urirothstock, with its glacier above, and the Gütschen. Those
straight walls of rock below are the Teufel’s-Münster.”
“Don’t you remember where Schiller says:
‘The blast, rebounding from the Devil’s Minster,
Has driven them back on the great Axenberg’?
That is it, and this here is the Axenberg,” said Emily, the elder girl.
“But I see no Platform here,” remarked George with mischief in his eye,
as he quickly detected the young girl’s faith in the hero.
“It would be impossible to see it,” she rejoined, “as it is three hundred
feet below this house.”
“But we can show you the way, if you will come,” continued the younger
child, taking George’s hand, who, partly from surprise and partly
amusement, allowed himself to be led like a lamb across the road and
through the garden to the pathway winding down the cliff, followed by us,
under guidance of the elder sister, Emily.
“Yes,” the children answered, “they had spent the last two years in
France and Germany.” And certainly they spoke both languages like
natives. Emily was even translating _William Tell_ into English blank
verse. “Heigho!” sighed Mr. C----, “for this precocious age.” But the
lake of the Forest Cantons was dearer to them than all else. They had
climbed one thousand feet up the side of the Frohnalpstock that very
morning with their father; knew every peak and valley, far and near,
with all their legends and histories; even the _ranz des vaches_ and
the differences between them--the shepherds’ calls to the cows and the
goats. Annie, our smaller friend, entertained George with all their
varieties, as she tripped daintily along, like a little fairy, with
her tiny alpenstock. Very different was she from continental children,
who rarely, if ever, take interest in either pastoral or literary
matters. She knew the way to the platform well; for did she not go up
and down it many times a day? A difficult descent it was, too--almost
perpendicular--notwithstanding the well-kept pathway; but not dangerous
until we reached the bottom, when each one in turn had to jump on to a
jutting piece of rock, in order to get round the corner into the chapel.
Most truly it stands on a small ledge, with no inch of room for aught but
the small building raised over it. The water close up to the shore is
said to be eight hundred feet deep, and it made one shudder to hear Herr
H----’s story of an artist who a few years ago fell into the lake while
sketching on the cliffs above. Poor man! forgetful of the precipice, he
had thoughtlessly stepped back a few steps to look at his painting, fell
over, and was never seen again. His easel and painting alone remained to
give pathetic warning to other rash spirits.
The chapel, open on the side next the water, is covered with faded
frescos of Tell’s history, which our little friends quaintly described;
and it contains, besides, an altar and a small pulpit. Here Mass is said
once a year on the Friday after the Ascension, when all the people of
the neighborhood come hither, and from their boats, grouped outside,
hear Mass and the sermon preached to them from the railing in front.
This was the feast which my Weggis guide so much desired to see. It is
unique in every particular, and Herr H---- was eloquent on the beauty and
impressiveness of the scene, at which he had once been present, and which
it was easy to understand amidst these magnificent surroundings. Nor is
it a common gathering of peasants, but a solemn celebration, to which the
authorities of Uri come in state with the standard of Uri--the renowned
Uri ox--floating at the bows. As may be supposed, the sermon is always
national, touching on all those points of faith, honor, and dignity which
constitute true patriotism. Mr. C---- had Murray’s guide-book in his
hand, and would not allow us to say another word until he read aloud Sir
James Macintosh’s remarks on this portion of the lake, which there occur
as follows:
“The combination of what is grandest in nature with whatever is
pure and sublime in human conduct affected me in this passage
(along the lake) more powerfully than any scene which I had
ever seen. Perhaps neither Greece nor Rome would have had such
power over me. They are dead. The present inhabitants are a
new race, who regard with little or no feeling the memorials
of former ages. This is, perhaps, the only place on the globe
where deeds of pure virtue, ancient enough to be venerable,
are consecrated by the religion of the people, and continue
to command interest and reverence. No local superstition so
beautiful and so moral anywhere exists. The inhabitants of
Thermopylæ or Marathon know no more of these famous spots than
that they are so many square feet of earth. England is too
extensive a country to make Runnymede an object of national
affection. In countries of industry and wealth the stream of
events sweeps away these old remembrances. The solitude of
the Alps is a sanctuary destined for the monuments of ancient
virtue; Grütli and Tell’s chapel are as much reverenced by
the Alpine peasants as Mecca by a devout Mussulman; and the
deputies of the three ancient cantons met, so late as the year
1715, to renew their allegiance and their oaths of eternal
union.”
“All very well,” said George, “if there really had been a Tell; but
this seems to me a body without a soul. Why, this very chapel is in the
Italian style, and never could have been founded by the one hundred and
twenty contemporaries who are said to have known Tell and to have been
present at its consecration.”
“I never heard that any one insisted on this being the original
building,” said Herr H----. “It is probably an improvement on it;
but it was not the fashion in those times--for people were not then
incredulous--to put up tablets recording changes and renovations,
as nowadays at Kaltbad and Klösterle, for instance. But speaking
dispassionately, Mr. George, it seems to me quite impossible that the
introduction of any legend from Denmark or elsewhere could have taken
such strong hold of a people like these mountaineers without some
solid foundation, especially here, where every inhabitant is known to
the other, and the same families have lived on in the same spots for
centuries. Why is it not just as likely that the same sort of event
should have occurred in more than one place? And as to its not being
mentioned in the local documents, that is not conclusive either; for we
all know how careless in these respects were the men of the middle ages,
above all in a rude mountain canton of this kind. Transmission by word of
mouth and by religious celebrations is much more in character with those
times. I go heart and hand with your own Buckle, who places so much
reliance on local traditions. The main argument used against the truth
of the story is, you know, that it was first related in detail by an old
chronicler called Ægidius Tschudi, a couple of hundred years after the
event. But I see nothing singular in that; for most probably he merely
committed to writing, with all the freshness of simplicity, the story
which, for the previous two hundred years, had been in the hearts and
on the lips of the peasants of this region. No invention of any writer
could have founded chapels or have become ingrained in the hearts of the
locality itself in the manner this story has done. It was never doubted
until the end of the last century, when a Prof. Freudenberger, of Bern,
wrote a pamphlet entitled _William Tell: a Danish Fable_.”
“Yes,” broke in little Emily, latest translator of Schiller, and who had
been listening attentively to our discussion, “and the people of the
forest cantons were so indignant that the authorities of Uri had the
pamphlet burned by the common hangman, and then they solemnly proclaimed
its author an outlaw.”
“I told you, Mr. George, that you were on dangerous ground here,” said
Herr H----, laughing.
“I must make him kiss this earth before he leaves,” said Mrs. C----, “as
I read lately of a mother making her little son do when passing here
early in this century, regarding it as a spot sacred to liberty. She
little thought a sceptic like you would so soon follow.”
“Well! I am _almost_ converted,” he answered, smiling, “but I wish Miss
Emily would tell us the story of Tell’s jumping on shore here,” trying to
draw out the enthusiastic little prodigy.
“Oh! don’t you remember that magnificent passage in Schiller where,
after the scene of shooting at the apple, Gessler asked Tell why he put
the second arrow into his quiver, and then, promising to spare his life
if he revealed its object, evades his promise the instant he hears that
it was destined to kill him if Tell had struck his son instead of the
apple? He then ordered him to be bound and taken on board his vessel at
Fluelen. The boat had no sooner left Fluelen than one of those sudden
storms sprang up so common hereabouts. There was one two days ago. Annie
and I tried to come down here, but it was impossible--the wind and waves
were so high we could not venture, so we sat on the pathway and read out
Schiller. Oh! he is a great genius. He never was in Switzerland. Yes!
just fancy that; and yet he describes everything to perfection. Well!
Tell was as good a pilot as a marksman, and Gessler, in his fright, again
promised to take off his fetters if he would steer the vessel safely. He
did, but steered them straight towards this ledge of rock, sprang out
upon it, climbed up the cliff, and, rushing through the country, arrived
at the Hohle-Gasse near Küssnacht before the tyrant had reached it.”
“Schiller decidedly has his merit, it must be confessed, when he can get
such ardent admirers as these pretty children,” said Herr H---- when we
bade farewell to our dear little friends.
“Yes,” answered the incorrigible George from the box seat, “poetry,
poetry!--an excellent mode of transmitting traditions, making them
indelible on young minds; but I am so far converted, Herr H----,”
continued he, laughing, “that I am sorry the doubts were ever raised
about the Tell history. It is in wonderful keeping with the place and
people, and it will be a great pity if _they_ give it up. ‘Se non è vero,
è ben trovato,’[12] at least.”
Hence onwards to Fluelen is the finest portion of the Axenstrasse, and
the opening views of the valley of the Reuss and the Bristenstock,
through the arches of the galleries or tunnels, every minute increased
in beauty. Several of us got out the better to enjoy them, sending the
carriages on ahead. The Schwytz cattle had quite escaped our memories,
when suddenly a bell sounded round a sharp angle of the road and a large
drove instantly followed.
A panic seized us ladies. The cliff rose vertically on the inner side,
without allowing us the possibility of a clamber, and in our fright,
before the gentlemen could prevent us, we leaped over a low railing,
which there served as a parapet, on to a ledge of rock, a few yards
square, rising straight up from the lake hundreds of feet below. All
recollection of their historical interest vanished from our minds; for,
as the cattle danced along, they looked as scared and wild as ourselves,
and it was not until they had passed without noticing us, and that their
dark-eyed masters had spoken some soft Italian words to us, that we fully
realized the extent of our imprudence. Had any one of these animals
jumped up over the railing, as we afterwards heard they have sometimes
done, who can say what might not have happened? Fortunately, no harm
ensued beyond a flutter of nerves, which betrayed itself by Anna’s
turning round to a set of handsome goats that soon followed the cattle,
crying out to them in her own peculiar German: “Nix kommen! nix kommen!”
Fluelen has nothing to show beyond the picturesqueness of a village
situated in such scenery and a collection of lumbering diligences and
countless carriages, awaiting the hourly arrival of the steamers from
Lucerne. The knell of these old diligences, however, has tolled, for the
St. Gothard Railway tunnel has been commenced near Arnsty, and though
it may require years to finish it, its “opening day” will surely come.
Half an hour’s drive up the lovely valley brought us to Altorf, at the
foot of the Grünwald, which, in accord with its name, is clothed with a
virgin forest, now called the “Bann forest,” because so useful is it in
protecting the town from avalanches and landslips that the Uri government
never permits it to be touched. Altorf, like so many of the capitals in
these forest cantons, has a small population, 2,700 inhabitants only,
but it has many good houses, for it was burnt down in 1799 and rebuilt
in a better manner. Tell’s story forms its chief interest, and certainly
did so in our eyes. We rushed at once to the square, where one fountain
is said to mark the spot where Tell took aim, and another that upon
which his boy stood. Tradition says that the latter one replaced the
lime-tree against which the son leant, portions of which existed until
1567. A paltry plaster statue of the hero is in the same square, but the
most remarkable relic of antiquity is an old tower close by, which Herr
H---- assured us is proved by documents to have been built before 1307,
the date of Tell’s history. Had the young friends we left at “Tell’s
Platform” accompanied us hither, Emily might have quoted Schiller to
us at length. But George, having recently bought a Tauchnitz edition
of Freeman’s _Growth of the English Constitution_, which opens with a
fine description of the annual elections of this canton, he earnestly
pleaded a prolongation of our drive to the spot where this takes place,
three miles further inland. Accordingly, after ordering dinner to be
ready on our return at a hotel which was filled with Tell pictures, and
an excellent one of the festival at the Platform, we left the town and
proceeded up the valley. Soon we crossed a stream, the same, Herr H----
told us, in which Tell is said to have been drowned while endeavoring to
save a child who had fallen into it. He also pointed out to us Bürglen,
his home, and an old tower believed to have been his house, attached to
which there is now a small ivy-clad chapel. It stands at the opening
of the Schächen valley, celebrated to this day for its fine race of
men--likewise corresponding in this respect with the old tradition.
But more modern interest attaches to this valley, for it was along its
craggy sides and precipices that Suwarow’s army made its way across the
Kinzig-Kulm to the Muotta. The whole of this region was the scene of
fearful fighting--first between the French and the Austrians, who were
assisted by the natives of Uri, in 1799, and then, a month later, between
the Russians coming up from Lombardy and the French.
“That was the age of real fighting,” said Herr H----, “hand-to-hand
fighting, without _mitrailleuses_ or long ranges. But the misery it
brought this quarter was not recovered from for years after. Altorf
was burnt down at that time, and everything laid waste. The memory of
the trouble lingers about here even yet. What wonder! Certainly, in
all Europe no more difficult fighting ground could have been found. In
the end, the French General Lecourbe was all but cut off, for he had
destroyed every boat on the lake; in those days a most serious matter,
as neither steamers nor Axenstrasse existed. When he therefore wished to
pursue the Russians, who by going up this Schächen valley intended to
join their own corps, supposed to be at Zürich, he too was obliged to
make a bold manœuvre. And then it was that he led his army by torchlight
along the dangerous mule-path on the Axenberg! Sad and dreadful times
they were for these poor cantons.”
Herr H---- showed us Attinghausen, the birth-place of Walter Fürst, and
the ruins of a castle near, which is the locality of a fine scene in
Schiller, but the last owner of which died in 1357, and is known to have
been buried in his helmet and spurs. Shortly after, about three miles
from Altorf, we reached the noted field, and George, opening Freeman,
read us the following passage aloud:
“Year by year, on certain spots among the dales and the
mountain-sides of Switzerland, the traveller who is daring
enough to wander out of beaten tracks and to make his journey
at unusual seasons, may look on a sight such as no other corner
of the earth can any longer set before him. He may there gaze
and feel, what none can feel but those who have seen with their
own eyes, what none can feel in its fulness more than once in a
lifetime--the thrill of looking for the first time face to face
on freedom in its purest and most ancient form. He is there in
a land where the oldest institutions of our race--institutions
which may be traced up to the earliest times of which history
or legend gives us any glimmering--still live on in their
primeval freshness. He is in a land where an immemorial
freedom, a freedom only less eternal than the rocks that guard
it, puts to shame the boasted antiquity of kingly dynasties,
which, by its side, seem but as innovations of yesterday.
There, year by year, on some bright morning of the springtide,
the sovereign people, not entrusting its rights to a few of
its own number, but discharging them itself in the majesty of
its corporate person, meets, in the open market-place or in
the green meadow at the mountain’s foot, to frame the laws
to which it yields obedience as its own work, to choose the
rulers whom it can afford to greet with reverence as drawing
their commission from itself. Such a sight there are but few
Englishmen who have seen; to be among these few I reckon among
the highest privileges of my life. Let me ask you to follow me
in spirit to the very home and birth-place of freedom, to the
land where we need not myth and fable to add aught to the fresh
and gladdening feeling with which we for the first time tread
the soil and drink in the air of the immemorial democracy of
Uri. It is one of the opening days of May; it is the morning
of Sunday; for men there deem that the better the day the
better the deed; they deem that the Creator cannot be more
truly honored than in using in his fear and in his presence the
highest of the gifts which he has bestowed on man. But deem not
that, because the day of Christian worship is chosen for the
great yearly assembly of a Christian commonwealth, the more
directly sacred duties of the day are forgotten. Before we,
in our luxurious island, have lifted ourselves from our beds,
the men of the mountains, Catholics and Protestants alike,
have already paid the morning’s worship in God’s temple. They
have heard the Mass of the priest or they have listened to the
sermon of the pastor, before some of us have awakened to the
fact that the morn of the holy day has come. And when I saw
men thronging the crowded church, or kneeling, for want of
space within, on the bare ground beside the open door, when I
saw them marching thence to do the highest duties of men and
citizens, I could hardly forbear thinking of the saying of
Holy Writ, that ‘where the spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty.’ From the market-place of Altorf, the little capital
of the canton, the procession makes its way to the place of
meeting at Bözlingen. First marches the little army of the
canton, an army whose weapons never can be used save to drive
back an invader from their land. Over their heads floats the
banner, the bull’s-head of Uri, the ensign which led men to
victory on the fields of Sempach and Morgarten. And before
them all, on the shoulders of men clad in a garb of ages past,
are borne the famous horns, the spoils of the wild bull of
ancient days, the very horns whose blast struck such dread into
the fearless heart of Charles of Burgundy. Then, with their
lictors before them, come the magistrates of the commonwealth
on horseback, the chief-magistrate, the Landamman, with his
sword by his side. The people follow the chiefs whom they have
chosen to the place of meeting, a circle in a green meadow,
with a pine forest rising above their heads, and a mighty spur
of the mountain range facing them on the other side of the
valley. The multitude of freemen take their seats around the
chief ruler of the commonwealth, whose term of office comes
that day to an end. The assembly opens; a short space is given
to prayer--silent prayer offered up by each man in the temple
of God’s own rearing. Then comes the business of the day. If
changes in the law are demanded, they are then laid before the
vote of the assembly, in which each citizen of full age has an
equal vote and an equal right of speech. The yearly magistrates
have now discharged all their duties; their term of office is
at an end; the trust that has been placed in their hands falls
back into the hands of those by whom it was given--into the
hands of the sovereign people. The chief of the commonwealth,
now such no longer, leaves his seat of office, and takes his
place as a simple citizen in the ranks of his fellows. It
rests with the free-will of the assembly to call him back to
his chair of office, or to set another there in his stead.
Men who have neither looked into the history of the past, nor
yet troubled themselves to learn what happens year by year
in their own age, are fond of declaiming against the caprice
and ingratitude of the people, and of telling us that under a
democratic government neither men nor measures can remain for
an hour unchanged. The witness alike of the present and of the
past is an answer to baseless theories like these. The spirit
which made democratic Athens year by year bestow her highest
offices on the patrician Pericles and the reactionary Phocion,
still lives in the democracies of Switzerland, alike in the
Landesgemeinde of Uri and in the Federal Assembly at Bern.
The ministers of kings, whether despotic or constitutional,
may vainly envy the sure tenure of office which falls to
the lot of those who are chosen to rule by the voice of the
people. Alike in the whole confederation and in the single
canton, re-election is the rule; the rejection of the outgoing
magistrate is the rare exception. The Landamman of Uri, whom
his countrymen have raised to the seat of honor, and who has
done nothing to lose their confidence, need not fear that when
he has gone to the place of meeting in the pomp of office, his
place in the march homeward will be transferred to another
against his will.”
The grand forms of the Windgälle, the Bristenstock, and the other
mighty mountains, surrounded us as we stood in deep silence on this
high green meadow, profoundly impressed by this eloquent tribute to a
devout and liberty-loving people, all the more remarkable as coming from
a Protestant writer. There was little to add to it, for Herr H----’s
experience could only confirm it in every point. Dinner had to be got
through rapidly on our return to Altorf, as we wished to catch the
steamer leaving Fluelen at five o’clock. Like all these vessels, it
touched at the landing-place beside Tell’s Platform, whence our young
friends of the morning, who had been watching for our return, waved us a
greeting. Thence we sat on deck, tracing Lecourbe’s mule-path march of
torch-light memory along the Axenberg precipices, and finally reached
the Waldstätterhof at Brunnen in time to see the sun sink behind Mont
Pilatus, and leave the varied outlines clearly defined against a deep-red
sky.
S. PHILIP’S HOME.[13]
O Mary, Mother Mary! our tears are flowing fast,
For mighty Rome, S. Philip’s home, is desolate and waste:
There are wild beasts in her palaces, far fiercer and more bold
Than those that licked the martyrs’ feet in heathen days of old.
O Mary, Mother Mary! that dear city was thine own,
And brightly once a thousand lamps before thine altars shone;
At the corners of the streets thy Child’s sweet face and thine
Charmed evil out of many hearts and darkness out of mine.
By Peter’s cross and Paul’s sharp sword, dear Mother Mary, pray!
By the dungeon deep where thy S. Luke in weary durance lay;
And by the church thou know’st so well, beside the Latin Gate,
For love of John, dear Mother, stay the hapless city’s fate.
For the exiled Pontiffs sake, our Father and our Lord,
O Mother! bid the angel sheathe his keen avenging sword;
For the Vicar of thy Son, poor exile though he be,
Is busied with thy honor _now_ by that sweet southern sea.
Oh! by the joy thou hadst in Rome, when every street and square
Burned with the fire of holy love that Philip kindled there,
And by that throbbing heart of his, which thou didst keep at Rome,
Let not the spoiler waste dear Father Philip’s Home!
Oh! by the dread basilicas, the pilgrim’s gates to heaven,
By all the shrines and relics God to Christian Rome hath given,
By the countless Ave Marias that have rung from out its towers,
By Peter’s threshold, Mother! save this pilgrim land of ours.
By all the words of peace and power that from S. Peter’s chair
Have stilled the angry world so oft, this glorious city spare!
By the lowliness of Him whose gentle-hearted sway
A thousand lands are blessing now, dear Mother Mary, pray.
By the pageants bright, whose golden light hath flashed through
street and square,
And by the long processions that have borne thy Jesus there;
By the glories of the saints; by the honors that were thine;
By all the worship God hath got from many a blazing shrine;
By all heroic deeds of saints that Rome hath ever seen;
By all the times her multitudes have crowned thee for their queen;
By all the glory God hath gained from out that wondrous place,
O Mary, Mother Mary! pray thy strongest prayer for grace.
O Mary, Mother Mary! thou wilt pray for Philip’s Home,
Thou wilt turn the heart of him who turned S. Peter back to Rome.
Oh! thou wilt pray thy prayer, and the battle will be won,
And the Saviour’s sinless Mother save the city of her Son.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE TROUBLES OF OUR CATHOLIC FOREFATHERS, RELATED BY
THEMSELVES. Second Series. Edited by John Morris, S. J.
London: Burns & Oates. 1875. (New York: Sold by The Catholic
Publication Society.)
Whilst our ears are deafened and our feelings shocked by the calumnies
and lying vituperation heaped upon all that is most worthy of love
and veneration upon earth by the Satanic societies which the Popes
have smitten with repeated excommunications, it is consoling to be
supplied--by limners, too, who are themselves no mean exemplars of the
noble development which the Church can give to virtue when it follows
her counsels--with lifelike portraits of Christian athletes in times
gone by. We do not know how soon our courage, patience, and charity may
be put to a similar test. Multitudes of our fellow-Catholics are already
subjected to every suffering but the martyrdom of death; and this seed of
the Church our enemies, more wily than the sanguinary heretics of the age
of Elizabeth, seem to be unwilling to sow. But they will not long be able
to restrain their passion. The word of persecution has gone forth; and so
bitter is the hatred of the very name of Christ, that before very long
nothing but the blood of Christians will satiate its instincts.
The persecution of the Church in England in the time of Elizabeth
resembled the persecution which is now raging against it, in the
political complexion given to it. But there were far stronger grounds for
it then than now. The superior claims of Mary to the throne, her virtues,
and her surpassing beauty, were a just subject of jealousy and uneasiness
to Elizabeth, and she might very naturally suppose that her Catholic
subjects were not likely to regard with any fondness the usurpation of an
illegitimate daughter of her apostate and tyrannical father.
In the present persecutions there is no political pretext, but one is
made under cover of which to extirpate from among mankind the religion
and very name of Christ.
This volume is the second of a series which promises to supply us with a
whole gallery of Christian heroes, which we of this age of worldliness,
cowardice, and self-seeking will do well to study attentively. As is
often the case, it is to the untiring zeal of the Society of Jesus we
owe so interesting as well as edifying a work. Father Morris, formerly
Secretary to Cardinal Wiseman, but who joined the Society after the death
of that eminent prelate, is its author, and he appears to us to have
executed his task with rare judgment. By allowing his characters to speak
in great part for themselves, the biographies and relations he presents
us with have a dramatic interest which is greatly increased by the quaint
and nervous style of the time in which they express themselves. We feel,
too, that it is the very innermost soul and mind of the individual that
is being revealed to us; and certainly in most of them the revelation
is so beautiful that we should possibly have ascribed something of
this to the partiality of a panegyrist, or to his descriptive skill,
if the picture had been sketched by the pen of any other biographer
than themselves. It is, indeed, the mean opinion they evidently have
of themselves, and the naïve and modest manner in which they relate
incidents evoking heroic virtue, their absolute unconsciousness of aught
more than the most ordinary qualities, which fascinate us. It bears
an impress of genuineness impossible to any description by the most
impartial of historians. They express a beauty which could no more be
communicated in any other way than can the odor of the flower or the
music of the streams be conveyed by any touch, how ever magic, of the
painter.
The present volume of the series contains the “Life of Father William
Weston, S.J.,” and “The Fall of Anthony Tyrrell,” by Father Persons; for
“our wish is,” says Father Morris, “to learn not only what was done by
the strong and brave, but also by the weak and cowardly.”
We are much struck in this history with the resemblance between those
times and the present in the unsparing calumny of which the purest and
the holiest men were made the victims.
For confirmation of these remarks, we refer the reader to the book
itself. But we cannot refrain from quoting, in spite of its length, the
following incident related by Father Weston. It is a remarkable example
of the salutary effect of the Sacrament of Penance:
“For there lay in a certain heretical house a Catholic who, with the
consent of his keeper, had come to London for the completion of some
urgent business. He had been committed to a prison in the country, a
good way out of London. He was seized, however, and overpowered by a
long sickness which brought him near to death. The woman who nursed
him, being a Catholic, had diligently searched the whole city through
to find a priest, but in vain. She then sent word to me of the peril of
that person, and entreated me, if it could be contrived, to come to his
assistance, as he was almost giving up the ghost. I went to him when the
little piece of gold obtained for me the liberty to do so. I explained
that I was a priest, for I was dressed like a layman, and that I had come
to hear his confession. ‘If that is the reason why you have come, it
is in vain,’ he said; ‘the time for it is passed away.’ I said to him:
‘What! are you not a Catholic? If you are, you know what you have to do.
This hour, which seems to be your last, has been given you that by making
a good and sincere confession you may, while there is time, wash away
the stains of your past life, whatever they are.’ He answered: ‘I tell
you that you have come too late: that time has gone by. The judgment is
decided; the sentence has been pronounced; I am condemned, and given up
to the enemy. I cannot hope for pardon.’ ‘That is false,’ I answered,
‘and it is a most fearful error to imagine that a man still in life can
assert that he is already deprived of God’s goodness and abandoned by
his grace, in such a way that even when he desires and implores mercy it
should be denied him. Since your faith teaches you that God is infinitely
merciful, you are to believe with all certitude that there is no bond
so straitly fastened but the grace of God can unloose it, no obstacle
but grace has power to surmount it.’ ‘But do you not see,’ he asked me,
‘how full of evil spirits this place is where we are? There is no corner
or crevice in the walls where there are not more than a thousand of the
most dark and frightful demons, who, with their fierce faces, horrid
looks, and atrocious words threaten perpetually that they are just going
to carry me into the abyss of misery. Why, even my very body and entrails
are filled with these hateful guests, who are lacerating my body and
torturing my soul with such dreadful cruelty and anguish that it seems
as if I were not so much on the point merely of going there, as that
I am already devoted and made over to the flames and agonies of hell.
Wherefore, it is clear that God has abandoned me for ever, and has cast
me away from all hope of pardon.’
“When I had listened in trembling to all these things, and to much more
of a similar kind, and saw at the same time that death was coming fast
upon him, and that he would not admit of any advice or persuasion, I
began to think within myself, in silence and anxiety, what would be
the wisest course to choose. There entered into my mind, through the
inspiration, doubtless, of God, the following most useful plan and
method of dealing with him: ‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘if you are going to
be lost, I do not require a confession from you; nevertheless, recollect
yourself just for a moment, and, with a quiet mind, answer me, in a few
words, either yes or no to the questions that I put to you; I ask for
nothing else, and put upon you no other burden.’ Then I began to question
him, and to follow the order of the Commandments. First, whether he had
denied his faith. ‘See,’ I said, ‘do not worry yourself; say just those
simple words, yes or no.’ As soon as he had finished either affirming or
denying anything, I proceeded through four or five Commandments--whether
he had killed any one, stolen anything, etc. When he had answered with
tolerable calmness, I said to him, ‘What are the devils doing now? What
do you feel or suffer from them?’ He replied: ‘They are quieter with
me; they do not seem to be so furious as they were before.’ ‘Lift up
your soul to God,’ I said, ‘and let us go on to the rest.’ In the same
fashion and order I continued to question him about other things. Then
I enquired again, saying, ‘How is it now?’ He replied; ‘Within I am not
tormented. The devils stand at a distance; they throw stones; they make
dreadful faces at me, and threaten me horribly. I do not think that I
shall escape.’ Going forward as before, I allured and encouraged the man
by degrees, till every moment he became more reasonable, and at last made
an entire confession of all his sins, after which I gave him absolution,
and asked him what he was suffering from his cruel and harassing enemies.
‘Nothing,’ he said; ‘they have all vanished. There is not a trace of
them, thanks be to God.’ Then I went away, after strengthening him by
a few words, and encouraging him beforehand against temptations which
might return. I promised, at the same time, that I would be with him
on the morrow, and meant to bring the most Sacred Body of Christ with
me, and warned him to prepare himself diligently for the receiving of
so excellent a banquet. The whole following night he passed without
molestation from the enemy, and on the next day he received with great
tranquillity of mind the most Holy Sacrament, after which, at an interval
of a few hours without disturbance, he breathed forth his soul, and
quietly gave it up to God. Before he died, I asked the man what cause
had driven him into such desperation of mind. He answered me thus: ‘I
was detained in prison many years for the Catholic faith. Nevertheless,
I did not cease to sin, and to conceal my sins from my confessor, being
persuaded by the devil that pardon must be sought for from God, rather
by penances and severity of life, than by confession. Hence I either
neglected my confessions altogether, or else made insincere ones; and so
I fell into that melancholy of mind and that state of tribulation which
has been my punishment.’”
LIGHT LEADING UNTO LIGHT: A Series of Sonnets and Poems. By
John Charles Earle, B.A. London: Burns & Oates. 1875.
Mr. Earle has undoubtedly a facility in writing sonnets; and a good
sonnet has been well called “a whole poem in itself.” It is also, we
think, peculiarly suitable for didactic poetry. The present sonnets are
in advance, we consider, of those we first saw from Mr. Earle’s pen. But
we still observe faults, both of diction and of verse, which he should
have learnt to avoid. His model seems to be Wordsworth--the greatest
sonneteer in our language; but, like him, he has too much of the prosaic
and the artificial.
We wish we could bestow unqualified praise upon the ideas throughout
these sonnets. And were there nothing for criticism but what may be
called poetic subtleties--such as the German notion of an “ether body,”
developed during life, and hatched at death, for our intermediate
state of being--we should have no quarrel with Mr. Earle. But when we
meet two sonnets (XLVIII. and XLIX.) headed “Matter Non-Existent,” and
“Matter Non-Substantial,” we have a philosophical error serious in its
consequences, and are not surprised to find the two following sonnets
teach Pantheism. In Sonnet XLVIII. the author’s excellent intention is to
refute materialism:
“‘Thought is,’ you say, ‘a function of the brain,
And matter all that we can ever know;
…
“‘From it we came; to it at last we go,
And all beyond it is a phantom vain,’ etc.
…
“I answer: ‘Matter is _a form of mind_,
_So far as it is aught_. It has no base,
Save in the self-existent.’”
Sonnet L. is headed, “As the Soul in the Body, so is God in the
Universe.” Surely, this is the old “Anima Mundi” theory! Then, in Sonnet
LI., the poet says of nature, and addressing God:
“She cannot live detached from thee. Her heart
Is beating with thy pulse. _I cannot tell_
_How far she is or is not of thee part_;
How far in her thou dost or dost not dwell;
That _thou her only base and substance art_,
This--this at least--I know and feel full well.”
Now, of course, Mr. Earle is unconscious that this is rank Pantheism.
He has a way of explaining it to himself which makes it sound perfectly
orthodox. But we do call such a blunder inexcusable in a Catholic writer
of Mr. Earle’s pretensions. The title of his volume, “Light leading unto
Light,” has little to do with the contents, as far as we can see; and,
certainly, there are passages which would more fitly be headed “Darkness
leading unto Darkness.”
We are sorry to have had to make these strictures. The great bulk of the
sonnets, together with the remaining poems, are very pleasant reading,
and cannot fail to do good.
FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE REV. THEODORE NOETHEN, FIRST
CATHOLIC CHAPLAIN OF THE ALBANY PENITENTIARY, TO THE
INSPECTORS. April 6, 1875. Albany: J. Munsell. 1875.
THIRTEEN SERMONS PREACHED IN THE ALBANY COUNTY PENITENTIARY. By
the Rev. Theodore Noethen. Published under the auspices of the
Society of S. Vincent de Paul. Albany: Van Benthuysen Printing
House. 1875.
We are glad to see Father Noethen’s familiar hand thus charitably and
characteristically engaged. These are the first documents of the kind
we have observed under the improving state of things in this country,
in which the priest of the Church is seen occupied in one of his most
important duties--reclaiming the erring; and in doing this the means
which he employs will doubtless be found more efficacious than any the
state has at its command. Did the state fully appreciate its highest
interest as well as duty, it would afford the Church every facility,
not only in reclaiming such of her children as have fallen into the
temptations by which they are surrounded, but also in the use of those
preventive measures involved in parish schools, which would save
multitudes from penitentiaries and houses of correction. Our over-zealous
Protestant friends throw every obstacle in the way of the adequate moral
and religious training of the class most exposed to the temptations
arising from poverty and lack of employment, and then blame the Church
for the result. We heartily welcome these signs of a better time coming.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLES OF S. PAUL AND OF THE CATHOLIC
EPISTLES; consisting of an Introduction to each Epistle, an
Analysis of each Chapter, a Paraphrase of the Sacred Text,
and a Commentary, embracing Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and
Dogmatical, interspersed with Moral Reflections. By the Rt.
Rev. John MacEvilly, D.D., Bishop of Galway. Third edition,
enlarged. Dublin: W. B. Kelly. 1875. (New York: Sold by The
Catholic Publication Society.)
After quoting this full, descriptive title-page, it will suffice to say
that the notes which form the commentary have in the present edition
been considerably enlarged. The work was originally published under the
approbation of the Holy Father, the late Cardinals Barnabo and Wiseman,
and the present venerable Archbishop of Tuam.
BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.
From Scribner, Armstrong & Co., New York: Personal
Reminiscences. By O’Keefe, Kelly, and Taylor. Edited by R. H.
Stoddard (Bric-à-Brac Series, No. VIII)
From the Author: An Address on Woman’s Work in the Church
before the Presbytery of New Albany. By Geo. C. Heckman, D.D.
Paper, 8vo, pp. 28.
From Wm. Dennis, G.W.S.: Journal of Proceedings of the Ninth
Annual Session of the Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia. Paper, 8vo,
pp. 73.
From the Author: The Battle of Life: An Address. By D. S. Troy,
Montgomery, Alabama. Paper, 8vo, pp. 14.
From Ginn Brothers, Boston: Latin Composition: An Elementary
Guide to Writing in Latin. Part I.--Constructions. By J. H.
Allen and J. B. Greenough. 12mo, pp. vi., 117.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXII., No. 128.--NOVEMBER, 1875.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev. I. T.
HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
FREEMASONRY.[14]
The saints have all, whilst yet in the flesh, foretastes of heavenly
bliss. But in these the closing days of time all the elect have a
presentiment of coming judgment. And that presentiment is strong in
proportion to their faith; stronger still in proportion to their charity.
Let our readers be assured at the outset. We are not about to imitate the
irreverence of the Scotch Presbyterian minister who, some few years ago,
pretended that he had discovered in the prophetic visions of S. John the
year in which will come to pass that event of stupendous awfulness, of
which He, before whom all mankind will then be judged, said: “Of that day
or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the
Father only.”
One fearful catastrophe, however, to befall mankind before the general
judgment is insisted on so often and with such solemn emphasis by the
Holy Spirit that the love of God seems to be, as it were, trembling
for his redeemed creature, and longing to reveal to him more than is
consistent with his own designs in the trial of his faith. For it must
be remembered that faith is a merit, and the absolutely indispensable
condition of our receiving the benefits of the divine atonement. Although
the gift of God, it is the part we ourselves, by co-operating with the
gift, contribute towards our own salvation. And what we are required
to believe is so beautiful and ennobling to the moral sense, and so
satisfying to the reason, that, supported as it is by the historical
evidence of the divinity of Christ and of his church, no one can refuse
to believe but those who deliberately choose darkness rather than light,
sin rather than virtue, Satan rather than God.
Yet so formidable was to be that last trial of the faith of Christians,
so crucial that conclusive test of their charity, which was to “deceive,
if it were possible, even the very elect,”[15] that the Spirit of Love,
yearning for the safety of his regenerate ones, and compassionating the
weakness of human nature, revealed its marks and signs in the fullest
and most circumstantial detail; so that, warned of the danger, and
recognizing it when it arrived, they might pass through it unhurt, whilst
those who succumbed to it might be without excuse before the divine
justice. It is the yearning of the heart of Christ towards his children,
whom he foresees will fail by thousands in that decisive trial, which
prompts the ejaculation that sounds almost like a lament over his own
inability to put any pressure on their free-will: “When the Son of man
cometh, will he find faith on the earth?” It is his anxiety, as it were,
about the fate of his elect amidst the seductions of that appalling
apostasy, which urged him, after he had indicated the signs that would
accompany it, to be on the perpetual, sleepless lookout for them. “Be
ever on the alert. Lo! I have foretold you all.”[16]
“Be ever on the alert, watch and pray. For you do not know when the time
may be.”[17]
“Watch, then, lest when he (the head of the family) shall have come on a
sudden, you be found sleeping.”[18]
“Moreover, what I say to you I _say to all_: Watch!”[19]
Throughout all the ages that have elapsed since those words of solemn
import fell from the lips of Jesus Christ it has been the plain duty
of all Christians--nay, of all to whose knowledge they were brought--to
narrowly scrutinize events, to keep their attention fixed upon them,
watching for the signs he foretold, lest they should appear unheeded,
and they be seduced from the faith; or be the cause, through their
indifference, of others being carried away in the great misleading.
But who now can be insensible to the predicted portents? So notorious
are they, and so exactly do they answer to the description of them
handed down to us from the beginning, that they rudely arouse us from
sleep; that they force our attention, however indifferent to them we may
be, however dull our faith or cold our charity. And when we see a vast
organization advancing its forces in one united movement throughout the
entire globe in an avowed attack, as insidious as it is formidable, upon
altars, thrones, social order, Christianity, Christ, and God himself,
where is the heart that can be insensible to the touching evidence of
loving solicitude which urged Him whom surging multitudes of his false
creatures were deliberately to reject in favor of a fouler being than
Barabbas, to iterate so often the warning admonition, “Be ever on the
watch”?
To study, therefore, the signs of the times, cannot be without profit to
all, but especially to us who have but scant respect for the spirit of
the age, who are not sufficiently enlightened by it to look upon Christ
as nothing more than a remarkable man, the sublime morality he taught and
set an example of as a nuisance, and his church as the enemy of mankind,
to be extirpated from their midst, because it forbids their enjoying the
illumination of the dagger-guarded secrets of the craft of Freemasonry.
To fix the date of the _Dies iræ_ is completely out of our power. It is
irreverent, if not blasphemous, to attempt it. It is of the counsels
of God that it should come with the swiftness of “lightning” and the
unexpectedness of “a thief in the night”; and that expressly that we
may be ever on the watch. But the signs of its approach are given to us
in order to help those who do not abandon “watching” in indifference,
to escape the great delusion--the imposition of Antichrist--which is to
immediately precede it. It is these signs we propose to study in the
following pages.
The predictions of Christ himself on this subject are far more obscure
than those subsequently given to us by his apostles. But this has always
been God’s way of revelation to his creature. To Moses alone, in the
mount, he revealed the moral law and that wondrous theocratic polity
which remained even after the perversity of his people had given it a
monarchical form; and Moses communicated it to the people. To the people
Christ spoke in parables, “and without a parable spake he not unto them.
But when he was alone with them, he explained all to his disciples.”[20]
“To you,” he said, “it is given to have known the mystery of the kingdom
of God; but to those without everything is a parable.”[21] The apostles
themselves, who were to declare the revelation, in order to increase
the merit of their faith, were not fully illuminated before the coming
down of the Holy Spirit. “You do not know this parable?” he said; “and
how are you going to understand all parables?”[22] To their utterances,
therefore, it is we shall confine ourselves, as shedding as much light
as it has seemed good to the Holy Ghost to disclose to us upon the
profounder and more oracular predictions of God himself in the flesh.
Besides SS. Peter, Paul, and John, S. Jude is the only other apostle, we
believe, who has bequeathed to the church predictions of the terrible
apostasy of Antichrist which is to consummate the trial of the faith of
the saints under the very shadow of the coming judgment. We will take
them in the order in which they occur. The first is in a letter of S.
Paul to the church at Thessalonica, where, exhorting them not to “be
terrified as if the day of the Lord were at hand,” he assures them that
it will not come “before there shall have first happened an apostasy, and
the man of sin shall have been revealed, the son of perdition--he who
opposes himself to, and raises himself above, all that is called God, or
that is held in honor, so that he may sit in the temple of God, showing
himself as if he were God.… And you know what now is hindering his
being revealed in his own time. For the mystery of iniquity is already
working; only so that he who is now keeping it in check will keep it in
check until he be moved out of its way. And then will the lawless one be
revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of his mouth,
and destroy with the illumination of his coming; whose coming is after
the manner of working of Satan, with all strength and symbols, and lying
absurdities, and in every enticement of iniquity in those who perish;
for the reason that they did not receive the love of the truth that they
might be saved. So God will send them the working of error, that they
may believe falsehood; that all may be judged who have not believed the
truth, but have consented to iniquity.”[23]
In a letter to Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus, S. Paul writes: “Now, the
Spirit says expressly that, in the last times, some shall apostatize
from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and to doctrines of
demons, speaking falsehood in hypocrisy, and having their own conscience
seared.”[24]
In a second letter to the same bishop he writes: “Know this, moreover:
that in the last days there will be a pressure of perilous times; men
will be self-lovers, covetous, lifted up, proud, blasphemous, disobedient
to parents, ungrateful, malicious, without affection, discontented,
calumniators, incontinent, hard, unamiable, traitors, froward, fearful,
and lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having indeed a form of
piety, but denying its power.”[25] S. Peter writes that “there will come
in the last days mockers in deception, walking according to their own
lusts.”[26]
S. Jude describes them as “mockers, walking in impieties according to
their own desires. These are they who separate themselves--animals, not
having the Spirit.”[27]
It would seem from the expressions of S. John-who of all the apostles
appears to have had most pre-eminently the gift of prophecy--as well as
from the manner in which the last days of Jerusalem and the last days
of the world appear to be mingled together in the fore-announcement
of Christ, that powerful manifestations of Antichrist were to precede
both events; although the apostasy was to be far more extensive and
destructive before the latter. “Little children,” writes the favorite
apostle, “it is the last time; and as you have heard that Antichrist
comes, so now many have become Antichrists; whence we know that it is the
last time.… He is Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.”[28]
“Every spirit who abolishes Jesus is not of God. And he is Antichrist
about whom we have heard that he is coming, and is even now in the
world.”[29]
We believe that these are the only passages wherein the Holy Ghost has
vouchsafed to give us distinct and definite information as to the marks
and evidences by which we are to know that there is amongst us that
Antichrist whose disastrous although short-lived triumph is to precede
by only a short space the end of time and the eternal enfranchisement of
good from evil.
The prophetic utterances on this subject in the revelations of S. John
are veiled in such exceedingly obscure imagery that we do not propose to
attempt any investigation of their meaning in this article. It is our
object to influence the minds of such Protestants as believe in God the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and of Catholics whose faith is so dull
and whose charity is so cold that they can listen to the blasphemies of
Antichrist without emotion.
We may remark here, however, that if we succeed in supplying solid
reasons for believing that Antichrist is already amongst us, and that
his dismal career of desolating victory has already begun, the duty of
studying those utterances of the Holy Ghost, so darkly veiled that the
faith of those who stand firm may have more merit in the trial of that
great tribulation, will have assumed a position of importance impossible
to be overrated. That they are to be understood, the Holy Ghost himself
implies. He intimates that their meaning is accessible to the spiritually
minded, and would even seem to make dulness of apprehension of it a
reproach, a lack of spiritual discernment. “If any one has the ear, let
him hear,”[30] he writes. And again: “This is wisdom. Let him who has
understanding reckon the number of the beast.”[31]
It is not necessary to the object we have in view that we should identify
“the beast” of the Apocalypse, seven-headed and having ten horns crowned
with diadems, with Antichrist. The question we propose to answer is
simply, “Are there under our eyes at this moment evidences of a present
Antichrist, or of his being close at hand?” In other words, “Is what is
called ‘the spirit of the age’ the spirit of Antichrist?”
For us, that we may be on our guard against his wiles, and armed to the
teeth to fight against him to the death, it is comparatively unimportant
whether we decide him to be actually amongst us or only just about to
appear. His marks and characteristics, his badges or decorations--these
are all we require.
If the Antichrist of the prophecies is a single, separate impersonation
of the demoniac attributes described by the Holy Ghost--if, in short, he
is an individual man, then he has not yet been revealed. In that case,
our identification of Antichrist will only have exposed that temper and
spirit with which “the red dragon”--“the devil”--“Satan”--“the ancient
serpent”--has possessed such vast multitudes of the human race throughout
the entire globe as to afford ground for calling it “the spirit of the
age,” and which is to culminate in some terrible personal embodiment--a
typical personage, as men speak. But if the prophecies do not designate
an individual man, but only the impersonation of a multitude of
individuals organized into a unity and animated with the same spirit,
then we think we shall be able to point the finger of horror and loathing
at the very Antichrist at present amongst us, and in the midst of
victory, as decisively and as clearly as the prophet of penance pointed
the finger of adoring love towards the Lamb of God.
We incline, and strongly, to the latter view. We must withhold our
reasons, partly because, as we have said, our object is equally subserved
by either view; but more because to do so would leave us too little space
for treating the main subject. We will content ourselves with stating
that those reasons are founded on the internal evidence supplied by the
several predictions; and also on our aversion to admit the possibility of
a more depraved _individual_ impersonation of evil than that unhappy man
whom God in human flesh pronounced a devil!
Whether, however, Antichrist be or not an individual man, one thing is
certain: that if we can point out an immense army of men, co-extensive
with the globe, highly organized, animated with the same spirit, and
acting with as much unity of purpose as if their movements were directed
by one head, who exhibit precisely those marks and characteristics
described in the predictions of Antichrist, we may expect even on the
supposition that they are to have a visible head, an individual leader,
who has yet to make his appearance; and that they are his hosts, who have
already achieved a great part of his victories.
What is first noticeable is that the stigma which is to be deeply branded
on the front of the Antichristian manifestation which is to precede the
close of time is “_Apostasy_”.
The day of the Lord will not come, “nisi venerit discessio primum;
Spiritus dicit quia in novissimis temporibus quidam a fide discedunt.”
There can be no need of dwelling on this. It is sufficiently obvious
that the great apostasy inaugurated by Luther was the first outbreak of
Antichristian victory. The success of that movement assured the spirit
of error of a career of victory. He was lurking in the fold, watching
for his opportunity, and snatching away stray souls, as S. John tells
us, in the time of the apostles. For a millennium and a half has he
been preparing his manifestation. He inspired Julian, he inspired the
Arians, he inspired all the heresies against which the definitions
of the faith were decreed. But when he had seduced men away from the
church, whole nations at a time, “dominationem contemnentes” (2 S. Peter
ii. 10), and captivated them to the irrational opinion that there is
no higher authority for the obligatory dogmas of the Christian Church
than the conviction of every individual, _solvere Jesum_, and then God,
was merely a matter of time. What human passion had begun human reason
would complete. The life of faith could not be annihilated at a blow.
It has taken three centuries for the sap of charity to wither away in
the cut-off branches. But sooner or later the green wood could not but
become dry; and reason, void of charity, would be forced to acknowledge
that if the Bible has no definite meaning other than what appears to be
its meaning to every individual, practically it has no definite meaning
at all; that God cannot have revealed any truth at all, if we have no
means of ascertaining what it is beyond our own private opinions; that
a book the text of which admits of as many interpretations as there are
sects cannot, without an authoritative living expositor, reveal truths
which it is necessary to believe in order to escape eternal punishment.
The claim of the Catholic Church to this authority having been pronounced
an usurpation, the progress, although slow, was sure and easy towards
pronouncing Christianity itself an usurpation. God himself cannot survive
Christianity. And we have now literally “progressed” to so triumphant
a manifestation of Antichrist that the work of persecution of God’s
Church has set in with a vengeance, and men hear on all sides of them the
existence of God denied without horror, even without surprise.
The first mark of a present Antichrist we propose to signalize is that
distinctly assigned to him by S. Paul--ὁ ἄνομος. This epithet is but
feebly rendered by the Latin _ille iniquus_, or the English “that wicked
one.” “The lawless one” better conveys the force of the Greek. For the
root νόμος includes in its meaning not only enacted law of all kinds, but
whatever has become, as it were, a law by custom; or a law of nature, as
it were, by the universal observance of mankind.
The first marked sequel of the apostasy, the first outbreak of success
of Antichrist in the political order, was the first French Revolution,
during which a harlot was placed for worship upon the altar of Notre Dame.
That fearful outbreak may have sat for its portrait to S. Peter in
the following description of the members of the Antichrist of the
“last times”: “Who walk after the flesh in the lust of concupiscence,
and despise authority; … irrational beasts, following only their own
brute impulses, made only to be caught and slain; … having eyes full
of adultery and of ceaseless sin; … speaking proud things of vanity,
enticing, through the desires of the luxury of the flesh, those who by
degrees go away from the truth, who become habituated to error; promising
them liberty, whereas they themselves are the slaves of corruption” (2
Pet. ii. 10, 12, 14, 18, 19).
That saturnalia of lawlessness, which Freemason writers have ever since
dared to approve, was the work of the “craft” of Freemasonry, to whose
organization and plan of action does indeed, in an especial sense,
apply S. Paul’s designation of τὸ μυστήριον τῆς ανομίας “the mystery
of lawlessness.” Mirabeau, Sieyès, Grégoire, Robespierre, Condorcet,
Fauchet, Guillotine, Bonneville, Volney, “Philippe Egalité,” etc., had
all been initiated into the higher grades.
Louis Blanc, himself a Freemason, writes thus: “It is necessary to
conduct the reader to the opening of the subterranean mine laid at that
time beneath thrones and altars by revolutionists, differing greatly,
both in their theory and their practice, from the Encyclopedists. An
association had been formed of men of every land, every religion, and
every class, bound together by mysterious signs agreed upon amongst
themselves, pledged by a solemn oath to observe inviolable secrecy as to
the existence of this hidden bond, and tested by proofs of a terrible
description.… Thus we find Freemasonry to have been widely diffused
immediately before the outbreak of the Revolution. Spreading over the
whole face of Europe, it poisoned the thinking minds of Germany, and
secretly stirred up rebellion in France, showing itself everywhere in the
light of an association resting upon principles diametrically opposed
to those which govern civil society.… The ordinances of Freemasonry did
indeed make great outward display of obedience to law, of respect to the
outward forms and usages of profane society, and of reverence towards
rulers; at their banquets the Masons did indeed drink the health of kings
in the days of monarchy, and of presidents in the time of republics,
such prudent circumspection being indispensable on the part of an
association which threatened the existence of the very governments under
whose eyes it was compelled to work, and whose suspicion it had already
aroused. This, nevertheless, did not suffice to counteract the radically
revolutionary influence continually exercised by the craft, even while it
professed nothing but peaceful intentions.”[32]
In the work from which the above and the greater part of our materials in
this article are borrowed, we read as follows: “It was precisely these
revolutionary designs of the secret society which induced its Provincial
Grand Master, the Prussian Minister Count von Haugwitz, to leave it. In
the memorial presented by him to the Congress of Monarchs at Verona,
in 1830, he bids the rulers of Europe to be on their guard against the
hydra. ‘I feel at this moment firmly persuaded,’ writes the ex-grand
master, ‘that the French Revolution, which had its first commencement
in 1788, and broke out soon after, attended with all the horrors of
regicide, existed heaven knows how long before, having been planned,
and having had the way prepared for it, by associations and secret
oaths.’”[33]
And the following:
“After the events of February, 1848, the ‘craft’ sang songs of triumph
at the open success of its secret endeavors. A Belgian brother, Van der
Heym, spoke thus: ‘On the day following the revolution of February a
whole nation rose as one man, overturned the throne, and wrote over the
frontal of the royal palace the words Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, all
the citizens having adopted as their own this fundamental principle of
Freemasonry. The combatants had not to battle long before the victory
over their oppressors was gained--that freedom won which for centuries
had formed the theme of Masonic discourses. We, the apostles of
fraternity, aid the foundation-stone of the Republic.’”[34]
And another master of the Freemasons, one Peigné, said about the same
time: “In our glorious Revolution of 1792 the Lodge of the Nine Sisters
gave to the world such men as Garat, Brissot, Bailly, Camille Desmoulins,
Condorcet, Champfort, Petion; the Lodge of the Iron Mouth gave to it
Fauchet, Goupil de Prefeln, Sieyès; the Lodge of Candor, Custine, the two
Lameths, and Lafayette.”
The horrors of that Revolution occasioned a temporary reaction and
checked the triumphs of the Freemasons. But well they know how to repair
their broken fortunes, bide their time, and reappear with renewed force.
Barruel, who was an eye-witness of the events of the period, and also
himself intimately acquainted with many Freemasons in Paris, relates that
the brethren, considering that the time had come when they were free to
publish the secret they had sworn to keep, shouted aloud: “At last our
goal is reached; from this day France will be one vast lodge, and all
Frenchmen Freemasons.”
A strong reaction of disgust and terror at the satanic orgies of
Freemasonry in the ascendant, moderated for a while this shout of
triumph. But in the disasters inflicted on France by the conquering
Germans, the “craft” thought to find a recurring opportunity. If the
Communist attempt at Paris in 1871 was not originally planned by the
Freemasons, they openly and officially joined it. “A procession composed
of at least five thousand persons, in which members of all the grades
took part, wearing their insignia, and in which one hundred and fifty
lodges of France were represented, wended its way to the town hall of
Paris. Maillet, bearing the red flag as a token of universal peace,
headed the band, and openly proclaimed, in a speech which met with
the approval of all present, that the new Commune was the antitype of
Solomon’s temple and the corner-stone of the social fabric about to be
raised by the efforts of the craft. The negotiations carried on with the
government of Versailles on behalf of the socialists, and the way in
which they planted the banners of the craft on the walls of the capital,
accompanying this action with a threat of instantly joining the ranks of
the combatants if a single shot were fired at one of those banners (of
which a graphic account appeared in the _Figaro_ at the time), was all
of a piece with the sentiments they expressed” (_The Secret Warfare of
Freemasonry_, p. 172).
_Figaro_ closed its account of these strange events with the following
reflections: “But when posterity shall be informed that in the middle
of the XIXth century, in the midst of an unbelieving generation, which
openly denied God and his Christ, under the very guns of an enemy in
possession of all the French fortresses, hostilities were all at once
suspended, and the course of a portentous and calamitous civil war
interrupted because, forsooth, Brother Thirifoque, accompanied by two
Knights Kadosch, went to offer to M. Thiers’ acceptance the golden mallet
of supreme command (in the craft)--when, I say, this story is told to
those who come after us, it will sound in their ears as a nursery tale,
utterly unworthy of credence.”[35]
In _Révélations d’un Franc-maçon au lit de mort, pièce authentique,
publicé, par_ M. de Hallet (Courtrai, 1826, p. 10), we find the
following: “We must restore man to his primeval rights, no longer
recognizing rank and dignity--two things the mere sight of which offends
the eye of man and wounds his self-love. Obedience is a mere chimera, and
has no place in the wise plans of Providence.”
In the _Astræa, Taschenbuch für Freimaurer_, von Bruder Sydow (1845), an
orator thus speaks: “That which is destined to destruction must in the
course of things be destroyed; and if human powers resist this law, at
the behest of fate, a stronger power will appear upon the scene to carry
out the eternal decrees of Providence. The Reformation of the church,
as well as the French Revolution, proves the existence of this law.…
Revolution is a crisis necessary to development.”
The _Révélations_ says: “The poison must be neutralized by means of its
antidote, revolution must succeed to obedience, vengeance follow upon
effeminacy, power must grapple with power, and the reign of superstition
yield before that of the one true natural religion.”
Barruel, who had been a master Mason, states that the oath administered
to him was: “My brother, are you prepared to execute every command you
may receive from the Grand Master, even should contrary orders be laid on
you by king or emperor, or any other ruler whatever?”
“The grade of Kadosch”--the thirtieth grade--writes Barruel (p. 222),
“is the soul of Freemasonry, and the final object of its plots is the
reintroduction of absolute liberty and equality through the destruction
of all royalty and the abrogation of all religious worship.”
“Socialism, Freemasonry, and communism have, after all, a common origin”
(The _Latomia_--an organ of the craft--vol. xii. p. 237).
_Le Libertaire_, a Masonic journal published in this city, had the
following in 1858: “The _Libertaire_ knows no country but that which is
common to all. He is a sworn foe to restraints of every kind. He hates
the boundaries of countries; he hates the boundaries of fields, houses,
workshops; he hates the boundaries of family.”
Is it within the power of the human mind to conceive of any possible
individual or spiritual incarnation more deeply, vividly, and distinctly
branded with the note-mark or sign of Antichrist, given to us by the
Holy Spirit some two thousand years ago, by which we might recognize him
when he appeared--“the lawless one,” “spurning authority”--ὁ ἄνομος, qui
contemnunt dominationem?
And when we add to this, the one special and most wicked and lawless
characteristic of the “craft”--its portentous mystery--to our thinking,
they must willingly, and of set purpose, close their eyes who fail
to detect in it the very Antichrist whom the apostle declares shall
be manifested in the last days, after the apostasy, and whom he
designates by the epithet τὸ μυστήριον τῆς ἀνομίας--“the mystery of
lawlessness”--which he tells us had even then, at the very cradle of
the church, begun to put in movement its long conspiracy against the
salvation of mankind: τὸ γὰρ μυστηριον ἢδη ενεργεῖται τῆς ἀνομίας--“for
the mystery of lawlessness is even now already working.”
No sooner was Christ born than his infant life was sought; no sooner
did he begin to teach than “the ancient serpent” sought his ruin; just
before the triumph of his resurrection the enemy of mankind seemed to
have finally and completely triumphed in his crucifixion; no sooner had
his church, brought to life by his resurrection, begun her work of saving
mankind than the devil was at work with his “mystery of lawlessness”
for her destruction. All along it is Antichrist dogging the steps of
Christ; before the second coming of Christ there is to be the second
coming of Antichrist; before the final triumph over evil and revelation
of the sons of God, Antichrist is to have that his last open and avowed
manifestation--ἀποκάλυψις--and success, which the craft of Freemasonry is
already so far on the road to compassing.
Whether or no he is to receive a serious check before that terrific
triumph over all but the few remaining elect we know not. But so
unmistakable is his present manifestation that it is woe to those who
blink their eyes and follow in his wake! Woe to those whose judicial
blindness causes them to “believe a lie”! Woe to those who are caught
napping!
The next of the indications given us by the Holy Spirit of the Antichrist
is his _modus operandi_--his method--the way in which he will effect
his purposes, “whose coming is according to the way of working of
Satan”--_cujus est adventus secundum operationem Satanæ_.
The beast with seven heads and ten horns crowned with diadems described
in the Apocalypse is, we are there told, fully commissioned with his
own power by the red dragon, whom we are distinctly informed is the old
serpent, who is called the devil (διάβολος, or slanderer), “Satan, who
deceives the whole world.”
Now, Satan is designated as “the prince of darkness” in opposition to
Christ, “who is the true light, enlightening every one that cometh
into the world”; he is the father of those who “hate the light because
their deeds are evil.” When he would destroy Christ, “night was his
hour and the power of darkness.” But in taking a survey of the craft of
Freemasonry, what first seizes our attention? Is it not the profound
darkness in which all its operations are veiled? Those terrible oaths of
secrecy, made under the assured menace of assassination, attended with
all that sanguinary gibberish, the lie involved in which is not known
until the “seared conscience” is already in the chains of hell--surely,
if anything is, these are “secundum operationem Satanæ.”
In the _Vienna Freemason’s Journal_, MSS. for circulation in the craft,
second year of issue, No. 1, p. 66, is the following: “We wander amidst
our adversaries, shrouded in threefold darkness. Their passions serve as
wires, whereby, unknown to themselves, we set them in motion and compel
them unwittingly to work in union with us.”
In a work written in High-German, the authorship of which is ascribed
to a Prof. Hoffman of Vienna, the contents of which are supported by
documentary evidence, and of which a Dutch translation was published in
Amsterdam in 1792, which was reprinted at the Hague in 1826, the method
of working of this “mystery of lawlessness” is thus summed up:
“2. To effect this, a literary association must be formed to promote the
circulation of our writings, and suppress, as far as possible, those of
our opponents.
“3. For this end we must contrive to have in our pay the publishers of
the leading literary journals of the day, in order that they may turn
into ridicule and heap contempt on everything written in a contrary
interest to our own.
“4. ‘He that is not with us is against us.’ Therefore we may persecute,
calumniate, and tread down such an one without scruple; individuals like
this are noxious insects which one shakes from the blossoming tree and
crushes beneath one’s foot.
“5. Very few can bear to be made to look ridiculous; let ridicule,
therefore, be the weapon employed against persons who, though by no means
devoid of sense, show themselves hostile to our schemes.
“6. In order the more quickly to attain our end, the middle classes of
society must be thoroughly imbued with our principles; the lower orders
and the mass of the population are of little importance, as they may
easily be moulded to our will. The middle classes are the principal
supporters of the government; to gain them we must work on their
passions, and, above all, bring up the rising generation in our ideas, as
in a few years they will be in their turn masters of the situation.
“7. License in morals will be the best means of enabling us to provide
ourselves with patrons at court--persons who are nevertheless totally
ignorant of the importance of our cause. It will suffice for our purpose
if we make them absolutely indifferent to the Christian religion. They
are for the most part careless enough without us.
“8. If our aims are to be pursued with vigor, it is of absolute necessity
to regard as enemies of enlightenment and of philosophy all those who
cling in any way to religious or civil prejudices, and exhibit this
attachment in their writings. They must be viewed as beings whose
influence is highly prejudicial to the human race, and a great obstacle
to its well-being and progress. On this account it becomes the duty of
each one of us to impede their action in all matters of consequence,
and to seize the first suitable opportunity which may present itself of
putting them entirely _hors du combat_.
“9. We must ever be on the watch to make all changes in the state serve
our own ends; political parties, cabals, brotherhoods, and unions--in
short, everything that affords an opportunity of creating disturbances
must be an instrument in our hands. For it is only on the ruins of
society as it exists at present that we can hope to erect a solid
structure on the natural system, and ensure to the worshippers of nature
the free exercise of their rights.”
If this method of working, _operatio_, is not _secundum adventum Satanæ_,
we should be glad to know what is. Herein we find every feature of
Antichrist and his hosts which the Holy Ghost has drawn for our warning.
They are heaped together in such hideous combination throughout this
summary as scarcely to need particularizing. Our readers may not,
however, be unwilling that we should single them out one by one as they
appear more or less prominently in the several paragraphs; premising that
throughout one characteristic reigns and prevails, and, indeed, lends
its color to all the rest, that special attribute of “the father of
lies”--falsehood!
We will take the paragraphs in order, and photograph their most prominent
Antichristian features.
_The first._--Spurning authority. Giving ear to spirits of error and
doctrines of demons.
Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having a conscience seared.
Blasphemers.
Mockers, walking according to their own desires; animals, not having the
Spirit.
Mockers in deception, walking according to their own lusts.
_The second and third._--Lovers of themselves, lawless, proud, malicious,
traitors, froward, discourteous, fearful, mockers in deception.
_The fourth._--Calumniators, cruel, traitors.
_The fifth._--Mockers in deception.
_The sixth._--Traitors, without affection, without peace.
_The seventh._--Traitors, walking in impieties, walking according to
their own lusts, incontinent.
_The eighth._--Having their conscience seared, without peace, cruel.
_The ninth._--Spurning authority, traitors, lawless, without peace.
It must be borne in mind, moreover, that these are not merely
repulsive infirmities of individuals, but the essential and inevitable
characteristics deliberately adopted by the craft of Freemasons, and
which it cannot be without, if they are the brand which the finger of
God has marked upon the loathsome brow of the Antichrist of “the last
time.”[36]
In illustration of the former of these we quote the words of Brother
Gotthold Salomon, D.Ph., preacher at the new Synagogue at Hamburg, member
of the lodge entitled “The Dawn in the East,” in Frankfort-on-Main, who
thus writes in his _Stimmen aus Osten_, MSS. for the brethren: “Why is
there not a trace of anything appertaining to the Christian Church to be
found in the whole ritual of Freemasonry? Why is not the name of Jesus
once mentioned, either in the oath administered, or in the prayers on the
opening of the lodges, or at the Masonic banquets? Why do Masons reckon
time, not from the birth of Christ, but from the creation of the world,
as do the Jews? Why does not Freemasonry make use of a single Christian
symbol? Why have we the compasses, the triangle, the hydrometer,
instead of the cross and other emblems of the Passion? Why have wisdom,
beauty, and strength superseded the Christian triad of faith, hope, and
charity?”[37]
Brother Jochmus Müller, president of the late German-Catholic Church at
Berlin, says in his _Kirchenreform_ (vol. iii. p. 228): “We have more in
common with a free-thinking, honest paganism than with a narrow-minded
Christianity.”[38]
In the Waarscherwing (vol. xi. Nos. 2 and 8) we find the following:
“The laws of the Mosaic and Christian religions are the contemptible
inventions of petty minds bent on deceiving others; they are the most
extravagant aberrations of the human intellect.
“The selfishness of priests and the despotism of the great have for
centuries upheld this system (Christianity), since it enabled them to
rule mankind with a rod of iron by means _of its rigid code of morality_,
and to confirm their power over weak minds by means of certain oracular
utterances, in reality the product of their own invention, but palmed off
on the world as the words of revelation.”[39]
In a review of Kirchenlehre and Ketzerglaube by Dr. A. Drechsler in
vol. iv. of the _Latomia_, we find: “The last efforts made to uphold
ecclesiastical Christianity occasioned its complete expulsion from the
realm of reason; for they proved but too plainly that all negotiations
for peace must result in failure. Human reason became aware of the
irreconcilable enmity existing between its own teachings and the dogmas
of the church.”
At a congress of Masons held at a villa near Locarno, in the district
of Novara, preparatory to a socialistic demonstration to be held in the
Colosseum at Rome, in answer to the sapient question, “What new form of
worship is to supersede Catholicism?” the equally sapient answer was
returned, “Communist principles with a new religious ideal.”
From a document published, the author of _Secret Warfare of Freemasonry_
tells us,[40] by the Orient of Brussels, “to the greater glory of the
Supreme Architect of the world, in the year of _true light_ 5838” (1838),
we quote the following:
“1. That at the head of every document issued by the brethren, in an
individual or corporate capacity, should stand a profession of faith
in our lawgiver Jesus, the son of Mary Amram (the Josue of the Old
Testament), the invariable formula to be employed being, ‘To the glory of
the Great Architect of the Universe,’ … to expose and oppose the errors
of pope and priest, who commence everything in the name of their Trinity.
…
“3. That in remembrance of the Last Supper or Christian love-feast
of Jesus, the Son of Mary Amram, an account of which is given in the
Arabic traditions and in the Koran, a solemn festival should be held,
accompanied by a distribution of bread, in commemoration of an ancient
custom observed by the slaves of eating bread together, and of their
deliverance by means of the liberator (Josue). The distribution is to
be accompanied by these memorable words: ‘This is the bread of misery
and oppression which our fathers were forced to eat under the Pharaos,
the priests of Juda; whosoever hungers, let him come and eat; this is
the Paschal sacrifice; come unto us, all you who are oppressed; yet this
one year more in Babylon, and the next year shall see us free men!’
This instructive, and at the same time commemorative, supper of the
Rosicrucians is the counterpart of the Supper of the Papists.”
Dr. Dupuy, indeed, informs us of the corrupt portion of the Order of
Templars, that “Receptores dicebant illis quos recipiebant, Christum
non esse verum Deum, et ipsum fuisse falsum, non fuisse passum pro
redemptione humani generis, sed pro sceleribus suis”--“They who received
said to those whom they received that Christ was not really God; that he
was himself false, and did not suffer for the redemption of the human
race, but for his own crimes.”
In harmony with all this was the offensively blasphemous utterance of Mr.
Frothingham at the Masonic hall in this city some weeks ago, at which the
New York _Tablet_ expressed a just indignation--an indignation which must
have been shared by all who believe, in any way or form, in Jesus Christ,
Redeemer of the world: “Tom Paine has keyed my moral being up to a higher
note than the Jesus of Nazareth.”
The argument we have advanced seems to us to be convincing enough as it
stands. Could we have taken a historical survey of the μυστήριον τῆς
ανομίας in the two hemispheres from the “apostasy” up to the present
time, but especially during the last fifteen years, it would have
acquired the force of a logical demonstration. The limits to which we
are necessarily restrained in a monthly periodical put this completely
out of our power. Whoever he may be who has intelligently appreciated
the political events of the latter period will be able to supply the
deficiency for himself. Merely hinting, therefore, at the impossibility
of getting anti-Freemason appreciations of contemporary events before
the public--well known to all whose position has invited them to that
duty--as an illustration of the plan of action laid down in the second
clause of the above summary; at the recent unconcealed advocacy of the
“craft” by the New York _Herald_, and the more cautious conversion of
the London Times,[41] of that in the third; at the ribaldry of the press
under Freemason influence directed against the bishops, clergy, and
prominent laymen, as well as against the Pope; the nicknames they are
for ever coining, such as “clericals,” “ultramontanes,” “retrogrades,”
“reactionists”; their blasphemous travesties of the solemnities of
religion in theatres and places of public resort, and so on, of that
in the fourth and fifth; at the world-wide effort to induce states to
exclude religious influences from the education of youth, of that of
the sixth; at Victor Emanuel, the Prince of Wales, etc., of that of the
seventh; at the assassination of Count Rossi at the beginning of the
present Pope’s reign, the quite recent assassination of the President of
Ecuador, the repeated attempts at assassination of Napoleon III., the
deposition of so many sovereigns, even of the Pope himself--so far as
it was in their power to depose him--of that of the eighth; and at the
whole area of Europe strewn with the wreck of revolution, of that of the
ninth; we pass on to the last two marks of Antichrist with which we brand
the Freemason confraternity--_Qui solvit Jesum_ (Who abolishes Christ)
and _Qui adversatur et extollitur supra omne quod dicitur Deus, aut quod
colitur, ita ut in templo Dei sedeat ostendens se tanquam sit Deus_ (Who
opposes himself to, and raises himself above, all that is called God, or
is worshipped, so that he may sit in the temple of God, making himself
out to be, as it were, God).
Barruel, who was completely versed in Freemasonry, and who had been
himself a Mason, states (p. 222) that “the grade of Kadosch is the soul
of Freemasonry, and the final object of its plots is the reintroduction
of absolute liberty and equality through the destruction of all royalty
and the abrogation of all religious worship.” And he backs this statement
by a tragic incident in the history of a friend of his, who, because he
was a Rosicrucian, fancied himself to be “in possession of the entire
secret of Freemasonry.” It is too long to admit of our quoting it.
The reader anxious for information we refer to _The Secret Warfare of
Freemasonry_ (pp. 142-144).
_Le Libertaire_, a New York paper, in the interests of Freemasonry, about
the year 1858 had the following: “As far as religion is concerned, the
_Libertaire_ has none at all; he protests against every creed; he is an
atheist and materialist, openly denying the existence of God and of the
soul.”
In 1793 belief in God was a crime prohibited in France under pain of
death.
Those of our readers who have some acquaintance with modern philosophy
we need here only remind of the _natura naturans_ and _natura naturata_
of Spinoza, born a Jew, but expelled from the synagogue for his advocacy
of these principles of Freemasonry: “The desire to find truth is a noble
impulse, the search after it a sacred avocation; and ample field for this
is offered by both the mysterious rites peculiar to the craft and those
of the Goddess Isis, adored in our temples as the wisest and fairest of
deities.”--_Vienna Freemason’s Journal_ (3d year, No. 4, p. 78 et seq.)
In the _Rappel_, a French organ of Freemasonry, was the following passage
a few weeks ago: “God is nothing but a creation of the human mind. In a
word, God is the ideal. If I am accused of being an atheist, I should
reply I prefer to be an atheist, and have of God an idea worthy of him,
to being a spiritualist and make of God a being impossible and absurd.”
In short, the craft is so far advanced in its course of triumph as to
have at length succeeded in familiarizing the public ear with the denial
of the existence of a God; so that it is now admitted as one amongst the
“open questions” of philosophy.
Our illustration of the crowning indications of the satanic mark of
Antichrist afforded by the Freemasons--the sitting in the temple of God,
so as to make himself out to be, as it were, God--will be short but
decisive.
The well-known passage in the last work of the late Dr. Strauss, to the
effect that any worship paid to a supposed divine being is an outrage on
_the dignity of human nature_, goes far enough, we should have thought,
in this direction; but they go beyond even this.
A Dutch Mason, N. J. Mouthan, in a work entitled _Naa een werknur
in’t Middenvertrek Losse Bladzijde; Zaarboekje voor Nederlandsche
Vrijmetselaren_ (5872, p. 187 et seq.), says: “The spirit which animates
us is an eternal spirit; it knows no division of time or individual
existence. A sacred unity pervades the wide firmament of heaven; it is
our one calling, our one duty, our one God. Yes, we are God! We ourselves
are God!”
In the Freemasons’ periodical “for circulation amongst the brethren”
(Altenberg, 1823, vol. i., No. 1) is the following: “The idea of religion
indirectly includes all men as men; but in order to comprehend this
aright, a certain degree of education is necessary, and unfortunately
the overweening egoism of the educated classes prevents their taking
in so sublime a conception of mankind. For this reason our temples
consecrated to the _worship of humanity_ can as yet be opened only to a
few.[42] We should, indeed, expose ourselves to a charge of idolatry,
were we to attempt to personify the moral idea of humanity in the way
in which divinity is usually personified.… On this account, therefore,
it is advisable not to reveal the cultus of humanity to the eyes of the
uninitiated, until at length the time shall come when, from east to west,
this lofty conception of humanity shall find a place in every breast,
this worship shall alone prevail, and all mankind shall be gathered into
one fold and one family.”
The principles of this united family, “seated in the temple of God,”
the Masonic philosopher Helvetius expounds to us; from whom we learn
that “whatever is beneficial to all in general may be called virtue;
what is prejudicial, vice and sin. Here the voice of interest has
alone to speak.… Passions are only the intensified expression of
self-interest in the individual; witness the Dutch people, who, when
hatred and revenge urged them to action, achieved great triumphs, and
made their country a powerful and glorious name. And as sensual love is
universally acknowledged to afford happiness, purity must be condemned
as pernicious, the marriage bond done away with, and children declared
to be the property of the state.”[43] The father of such a “one fold and
one family” no one not himself signed with the “mark of the beast” could
hesitate to point out. The consummation above anticipated we are bid to
expect. Nor is it now far off. They who are not “deceived” have, however,
the consoling assurance that _our_ Lord will “slay him with the spirit of
his mouth, and destroy him with the illumination of his coming.”
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._
FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
II.
“You understand, M. de Soria,” said Wolsey to one of his secretaries, in
whom he placed the greatest confidence. “As soon as you see him, present
yourself before him, give the usual password, and then conduct him
through the subterranean passage that leads to the banks of the Thames.
Bring him here by the secret stairway. He will be dressed in a cloak and
suit of brown clothes, wearing a black felt hat tied round with a red
ribbon.”
“My lord, you may feel perfectly satisfied,” replied the secretary with a
self-sufficient air, “that all your orders will be punctually executed.
But he cannot possibly arrive for an hour yet; I will vouch for that, my
lord.”
“Go, however, sir,” replied the minister, impatiently; “I fear being
taken by surprise. Have less confidence in your own calculations, sir,
and be more prompt in your actions.” And saying this he made a sign for
him to go at once.
The door had scarcely closed on Soria, when the cardinal, who sat writing
in silence, heard in the court of the chancellor’s palace an unusual
noise. For some time he continued his work; but the tumult increasing,
and hearing loud bursts of laughter, he arose, opened the window and went
out on a high balcony, whence he had a view of all that was passing in
the principal court.
There a crowd of servants had assembled, and formed a circle around an
old woman who was apparently the object of their ridicule. Her large felt
hat, around which was tied a band of red ribbon, had fallen to the ground
leaving uncovered, not the head of an old woman, as they had supposed,
but one thickly covered with short hair, black and curling.
On seeing this head-dress the crowd redoubled their cries, and one of
them advancing suddenly, raised the mask concealing the features. What
was their surprise to find under that disguise a great rubicund face,
the nose and cheeks of which were reddened with the glow that wine
and strong drink alone produce, and giving sufficient evidence of the
sex to which it belonged. The man, seeing he was discovered, defended
himself with vigor, and, dealing sharp blows with his feet and hands,
endeavored to escape from his tormentors; but he was unable to resist
their superior numbers. They threw themselves upon him, tearing off his
brown cloak, and one of his blue cotton petticoats. The wretched creature
cried out vociferously, loudly threatening them with the indignation of
the cardinal; but the valets heard nothing, vain were all his efforts
to escape them. Nevertheless, being exceedingly robust, he at length
succeeded in overthrowing two of his antagonists, and then, dashing
across the courtyard, he sprang quickly into the second court, where,
finding a ladder placed at the window of a granary, he clambered up with
all the dexterity of a frightened cat, and hid himself under a quantity
of straw which had been stored there. In the meantime, the cardinal had
recognized from his elevated position on the balcony the red ribbon that
announced the messenger for whom he awaited with so much anxiety. Greatly
enraged at the scene before him, and forgetting his dignity, he hurried
from the balcony, rushing through the apartments that led from his own
room (in which were seated the numerous secretaries of state, engaged
in the work of the government). Without addressing a word to them, he
descended the stairs so rapidly that in another instant he stood in the
midst of his servants, who were stupefied at finding themselves in the
presence of their master, all out of breath, bareheaded, and almost
suffocated with indignation. He commanded them in the most emphatic terms
to get out of his sight, which they did without waiting for a repetition
of the order. From every direction the pages and secretaries had
assembled, among them being M. de Soria, who was in great trepidation,
fearing some accident had happened to the individual whom he had been
instructed to introduce with such great secrecy into the palace. His
fears were more than realized on seeing the cardinal, who cast on him
a glance of intense anger, and in a loud voice exclaimed: “Go, sir, to
the assistance of this unfortunate man who is being subjected to such
outrages in my own house. Not a few of those who have attempted to drive
him off shall themselves be sent away!” Then the cardinal, giving an
authoritative signal, those around him understood that their presence was
no longer desired, and immediately ascended the stairs and returned to
their work.
Wolsey himself quickly followed them; and M. de Soria, greatly confused,
in a short time appeared and ushered into the minister’s cabinet the
messenger, who was still suffering from the effects of the contest in
which he had been compelled to engage.
“Your letters! your letters!” said Wolsey eagerly, as soon as they were
alone. “All is right, Wilson. I am satisfied. I see that you are no
coward, and all that you have just now suffered will be turned to your
advantage. Nevertheless, it is quite fortunate that I came to your rescue
when I did, for I really do not know what those knaves might have done to
you.”
“They would have thrown me into the water, I believe, like a dog,” said
Wilson, laughing. “Oh! that was nothing though. I have been through worse
than that in my life. All I was afraid of was, that they might discover
the package of letters and the money.”
As he said this, the courier proceeded to unfasten the buckles of an
undervest, made of chamois leather, that he wore closely strapped around
his body. After he had taken off the vest he unfastened a number of bands
of woollen cloth which were crossed on his breast. In each one of these
bands was folded a great number of letters, of different forms and sizes.
Then he unstrapped from his waist and laid on the table a belt that
contained quite a large sum of money in gold coin, that Francis I. had
sent to the minister. The avarice of Wolsey was so well understood by
the different princes and sovereigns of Europe that they were accustomed
to send him valuable presents, or to confer on him rich annuities,
whenever they wished to gain him over to their interests. Wolsey had for
a long time been engaged in a correspondence with France. He carried
it on with the utmost secrecy, for he well understood if discovered by
Henry he would never be pardoned. His apprehensions were still greater,
now that he was endeavoring to direct the influence of his political
schemes, and that of the paid agents whom he had at the different courts
of Europe, towards bringing about a reconciliation between the Emperor
Charles V. and the King of France; hoping by such an alliance to prevent
the marriage of the king with Anne Boleyn, and thus to destroy the hopes
of that ambitious family. He saw with intense satisfaction his intrigues
succeeding far beyond his most sanguine expectations.
Francis I. anxiously entreated him to use his influence with the King of
England, in order to dispose him favorably toward the treaty of peace
which he was determined to make with Charles V. “I assure you,” he wrote,
“that I have so great a desire to see my children, held so long now as
hostages, that I would without hesitation willingly give the half of my
kingdom to ensure that happiness. If you will aid me in removing the
obstacles that Henry may interpose to the accomplishment of this purpose,
you may count on my gratitude. The place of meeting is already arranged;
we have chosen the city of Cambrai; and I have felt great pleasure in the
assurance that you prefer, above all other places, that the conference
should be held in that city.” Charmed with his success, the cardinal sent
immediately in quest of Cromwell, whom he found every day becoming more
and more indispensable to him, and to whom he wished to communicate the
happiness he experienced in receiving this joyful intelligence; but, at
the same time, closely concealing the manner in which he had obtained the
information.
* * * * *
On a terrace of Windsor Castle a tent had been erected of heavy Persian
cloth interwoven with silk and gold. Voluminous curtains of royal purple,
artistically looped on each side with heavy silk cords, descended in
innumerable folds of most graceful drapery. Rare flowers embalmed the
air in every direction with exquisite perfumes, which penetrated into an
apartment of the royal palace, through the open windows of which were
seen the richness and elegance of the interior.
In this apartment were seated three persons apparently engaged in an
animated conversation.
“So there is yet another difficulty!” cried a young girl, a charming and
beautiful blonde, who seemed at this moment in an extremely impatient and
excited mood. “But what say you?” she added presently, addressing herself
with vivacity to a gentleman seated immediately in front of her; “speak
now, Sir Cromwell; say, what would you do in this desperate situation? Is
there no way in which we can prevent this treaty from being concluded?”
“Well truly, madam,” he replied, “it will be useless to attempt it. The
Duchess of Angoulême has at this moment, perhaps, already arrived at
Cambrai, for the purpose of signing the treaty; and we cannot reasonably
hope that the Archduchess Margaret, who accompanies her, will not agree
with her on every point, since the preliminaries have already been
secretly concluded between the Emperor and the King of France.”
“Well, my dear Cromwell,” she replied, in a familiar and angry tone,
“what shall we do then?”
“If I have any counsel to give you, madam,” answered Cromwell, with an
air of importance, “it is to begin by preventing the king from consenting
to the departure of Cardinal Wolsey; because his greatest desire now
is to be sent as envoy to the congress at Cambrai, and you may be well
assured, if he wishes to go there, it is certainly not with the intention
of being useful to you, but, on the contrary, to injure you.”
“Do you think so?” replied Lady Anne. “Then I shall most certainly
endeavor to prevent him from making his appearance there. But has he told
you nothing about the letter I wrote him the other day?”
“Excuse me, madam,” replied Cromwell, “he has shown me the letter; in
fact, he conceals nothing from me.”
“Well! and did it not give him pleasure? It seemed to me it ought to
please him, for I made protestations of friendship sufficient to reassure
him, and remove all apprehensions he may have felt that I would injure
him in the estimation of the king.”
“He has said nothing to me on the subject,” replied Cromwell, “but I
remarked that he read the letter over several times, and when he handed
it to me it was with a very ominous shake of the head. Understanding so
well his every gesture and thought, I comprehended perfectly he was but
little convinced of what you had written, and that he has no confidence
in it. Moreover, madam, it is necessary that you should know that Wolsey
has been most active in his endeavors to forward the divorce so long as
he believed the king would espouse a princess of the house of France; but
since he knows it is _you_ he has chosen, his mind is entirely changed,
and he tries in every possible manner to retard the decision and render
success impossible.”
“It is clear as day, my dear sister!” exclaimed Lord Rochford, earnestly
interrupting Cromwell. “You know nothing about the affairs you are
trying to manage; therefore you will never be able to rid yourself of
this imperious minister. I have already told you that all your efforts
to flatter or appease him will be in vain. He believes you fear him, and
he likes you no better on that account. What Cromwell says is but too
true, and is verified by the fact that nothing advances in this affair.
Every day some new formalities are introduced, or advantages claimed,
or they wait for new instructions and powers. They tell us constantly
that Campeggio is inflexible; that nothing will induce him to deviate
from his instructions and the usages of the court of Rome. But whom
has he chosen--with whom has he conferred? Is it not Wolsey? And he
has certainly prevented us from obtaining anything but what he himself
designed to accomplish.”
“You are right, brother!” cried Anne Boleyn, with a sudden gesture of
displeasure. “It is necessary to have this haughty and jealous minister
removed. Henceforth all my efforts shall be directed to this end. It may,
perhaps, be less difficult than we suppose. The king has been violently
opposed to this treaty, which Wolsey has so earnestly labored to bring
about--or at least the king suspects him of it--and he told me yesterday
that it was vain for the king of France to address him as ‘his good
brother and perpetual ally,’ for he regarded as enemies all who presumed
to oppose his will. ‘Because,’ he added, ‘I understand very well,
beforehand, what their terms will be. Once become the ally of Charles V.,
Francis will use all his efforts to prevent the repudiation of his aunt;
but nothing under heaven shall divert me from my purpose. I will resist
all the counsels he may give me!’”
“He is much disappointed,” said Lord Rochford, “that the Pope should have
been raised, as it were, from the dead. His death would have greatly
lessened these difficulties; for he holds firmly to his opinions. I am
much deceived, or the commission of legates will pass all their time, and
a very long time too, without coming to any decision.”
As Lord Rochford made this remark, his wife, the sister-in-law of Anne
Boleyn, entered the apartment, accompanied by the young wife of Lord
Dacre. Now, as Lady Rochford belonged entirely to the queen’s adherents,
and Lady Anne was very much in fear of her, the tone of conversation was
immediately changed, becoming at once general and indifferent.
“The Bishop of Rochester has returned to London,” carelessly remarked
Anne Boleyn, as she stooped to pick up a little embroidered glove.
“Yes, madam,” replied Cromwell. “I have seen him, and I find him looking
quite old and feeble.”
“Ah! I am truly sorry to hear it,” replied Lady Anne; “the king is very
much attached to him. I have often heard him say he regarded him as the
most learned and remarkable man in England, and that he congratulated
himself on possessing in his kingdom a prelate so wise, virtuous, and
accomplished.”
“What would you wish, madam?” replied Cromwell, who never could suffer
any one to be eulogized in his presence; “all these old men should give
place to us--it is but just; they have had their time.”
“Ah! Sir Cromwell,” replied Lady Boleyn, smiling, “you have no desire,
I am sure, to be made bishop; therefore, the place he will leave vacant
will not be the one for you.”
“You have decided that question very hastily, madam. Who knows? I may one
day, perhaps, be a curate. It has been predicted of me.”
“Oh! that would indeed be a very strange sight,” she replied, laughing
aloud. “You certainly have neither the turn nor the taste for the office.
How would you ever manage to leave off the habit of frequenting our
drawing-rooms? Truly we could not afford to lose you, and would certainly
get up a general revolt, opposing your ordination, rather than be
deprived of your invaluable society.”
“You are very kind, madam,” said Cromwell; “but I should perhaps not
be so ridiculous as you imagine. I should wear a grave and severe
countenance and an air of the greatest austerity.”
“Oh! I understand you now,” she replied; “you would not be converted;
you would only become a hypocrite!”
“I have a horror of hypocrites!” said Cromwell scornfully.
“I wonder what you are, then?” thought Lady Rochford.
“And I also,” replied Lady Anne. “I have a perfect detestation of
hypocrites; it is better to be bad out and out!”
“Is it true there has been a riot in the city?” asked Lady Rochford.
“Yes, madam,” replied Cromwell; “but it was suppressed on the spot. It
was only a hundred wool-spinners, carders, and drapers, who declared they
were no longer able to live since the market of the Netherlands has been
closed, and that they would soon starve if their old communications were
not re-established. The most mutinous were arrested, the others were
frightened and quickly dispersed.”
“Oh!” said Lord Rochford, “there is nothing to fear from such a rabble
as that; they are too much afraid of their necks. Let them clamor, and
let us give ourselves no uneasiness on the subject. I met Sir Thomas More
this morning going to the king with a petition which they had addressed
to him yesterday.”
“Why was he charged with the commission?” asked young Lady Dacre.
“In virtue of his office as sheriff of the city,” replied Cromwell.
“He constitutes, then, part of our city council?” she replied. “He is a
man I have the greatest desire to know; they say such marvellous things
of him, and I find his poetry full of charming and noble thoughts.”
“I see,” replied Cromwell, “you have not read the spirited satire just
written by Germain de Brie? It points out the perfectly prodigious
faults of More’s productions. It is certainly an _anti-Morus_!”
“I am inclined to think your opinion is prompted by a spirit of jealousy,
Sir Cromwell,” answered Lady Rochford, sharply. “Read, madam,” she
continued, addressing young Lady Sophia Dacre, “his _History of Richard
III._; I suppose Sir Cromwell will, at least, accord some merit to that
work?”
“Entirely too light, and superficial indeed, madam,” said Cromwell;
“the author has confined himself wholly to a recital of the crimes
which conducted the prince to the throne. The style of that history is
very negligent, but, at the same time, very far above that of his other
works, and particularly of his _Utopia_, which is a work so extravagant,
a political system so impracticable, that I regard the book simply as
a wonderful fable, agreeable enough to listen to, but at which one is
obliged to laugh afterwards when thinking of the absurdities it contains.”
“Your judgment is as invidious as it is false!” exclaimed Lady Rochford,
who always expressed her opinions bluntly, and without dissimulation. “If
it is true,” she continued, “that this philosophical dream can never be
realized, yet it is nevertheless impossible not to admire the wise and
virtuous maxims it contains. Above all others there is one I have found
so just, and so beautifully conceived, I could wish every young girl
capable of teaching it to her future husband. ‘How can it be supposed,’
says the author, ‘that any man of honor and refinement could resolve
to abandon a virtuous woman, who had been the companion of his bosom,
and in whose society he had passed so many days of happiness; only
because time, at whose touch all things fade, had laid his destroying
hand upon the lovely features of that gentle wife, once so cherished and
adored? Because age, which has been the first and most incurable of all
the infirmities she has been compelled to drag after her, had forcibly
despoiled her of the charming freshness of her youth? Has that husband
not enjoyed the flower of her beauty and garnered in the most beautiful
days of her life, and will he forsake his wife now because she has become
feeble, delicate, and suffering? Shall he become inconstant and perjured
at the very moment when her sad condition demands of him a thousand
sacrifices, and claims a return to the faithful devotion and vows of
his early youth? Ah! into such a depth of unworthiness and degradation
we will not presume it possible for any man to descend! It was thus the
people of the Utopian Isle reasoned, declaring it would be the height of
injustice and barbarity to abandon one whom we had loved and cherished,
and who had been so devoted to us, at the moment when suffering and
affliction demanded of us renewed sympathy and a generous increase of
our tenderest care and consolations!’[44] And now, my dear sister,” she
added, fixing her eyes steadfastly on Lady Boleyn, “what do you think
of that passage? Are you not forcibly struck by the truth and justice
of the sentiment? Let me advise you when you marry to be well satisfied
beforehand that your husband entertains the same opinions.”
As she heard these last words the beautiful face of Anne Boleyn became
suddenly suffused with a deep crimson, and for some moments not a word
was uttered by any one around her. They understood perfectly well that
Lady Rochford’s remarks were intended to condemn in the most pointed
manner the king’s conduct towards the queen, whose failing health was
entirely attributable to the mortification and suffering she endured on
account of her husband’s ingratitude and ill-treatment.
In the meantime, the silence becoming every moment more and more
embarrassing, Anne Boleyn, forcibly assuming an air of gayety, declared
her sister was disposed to look very far into the future; “but,” she
added, “happily, my dear sister, neither you nor I are in a condition to
demand all those tender cares due to age and infirmity.”
“Come, ladies, let us go,” said Cromwell in a jesting tone, hoping to
render himself agreeable to Lady Anne by relieving the embarrassment the
conversation had caused her. “I am unable to express my admiration for
Lady Rochford. She understands too well the practice of the Utopian laws
not to wish for the position of Dean of the Doctors of the University of
Oxford.”
“You are very complimentary and jocose, sir,” replied Lady Rochford;
“and if you wish it, I will introduce you to one who will be personally
necessary if you should ever aspire to fill a position in that kingdom.
You must know, however, that their wise law-giver, Utopia, while he
accorded to each one liberty of conscience, confined that liberty within
legitimate and righteous bounds, in order to prevent the promulgation
of the pernicious doctrines of pretended philosophers, who endeavor
to debase the dignity of our exalted human nature; he also severely
condemned every opinion tending to degenerate into pure materialism,
or, what is more deplorable still, veritable atheism. The Utopians were
taught to believe in the reality of a future state, and in future rewards
and punishments. They detested and denounced all who presumed to deny
these truths, and, far from admitting them to the rank of citizens, they
refused even to class among men those who debased themselves to the
abject condition of vile animals. ‘What,’ they asked, ‘can be done with
a creature devoid of principle and without faith, whose only restraint
is fear of punishment, who without that fear would violate every law
and trample under foot those wise rules and regulations which alone
constitute the bulwark of social order and happiness? What confidence
can be reposed in an individual purely sensual, living without morals
and without hope, recognizing no obligation but to himself alone; who
limits his happiness to the present moment; whose God is his body; whose
law, his own pleasures and passions, in the gratification of which he
is at all times ready to proceed to the extremity of crime, provided he
can find means of escaping the vigilant eye of justice, and be a villain
with impunity? Such infamous characters are of course excluded from all
participation in municipal affairs, and all positions of honor and public
trust; they are veritable automatons, abandoned to the “error of their
ways,” wretched, wandering “cumberers of the earth” on which they live!’
You perceive, Sir Cromwell,” continued Lady Rochford ironically, “that
my profound knowledge and retentive memory may prove very useful to you,
should you ever arrive at the Utopian Isle, for you must be convinced
that your own opinions would meet with very little favor in that country.”
Cromwell, humiliated to the last degree, vainly endeavored to reply
with his usual audacity and spirit. Finding all efforts to recover his
self-possession impossible, he stammered forth a few incoherent words,
and hastily took his leave.
The desire of winning the approbation of Anne Boleyn at the expense
of her sister-in-law had caused him to commit a great blunder, and
he received nothing in return to remove the caustic arrows from his
humiliated and deeply wounded spirit. Extremely brilliant and animated in
conversation, Lady Rochford was accustomed to “having the laugh entirely
on her own side,” which, knowing so very well, Anne had pretended not
to understand the conversation, although the remarks had been so very
piquant.
As soon as he had retired Cromwell became the subject of conversation,
and Anne timidly, and with no little hesitation, ventured to remonstrate
with her sister-in-law, expressing her regret that the conversation
should have been made so personal, as she liked Cromwell very much.
“And that is just what you are wrong in doing,” replied Lady Rochford;
“for he is a deceitful and dangerous man! He pretends to be extremely
devoted to you, but it is only because he believes he can make you
useful to himself; and he is full of avarice and ambition. This you
will discover when it is perhaps too late, and I advise you to reflect
seriously on the subject. It is so cruel to be mistaken in the choice of
a friend that, truly, the surer and better way would seem to be, to form
no friendships at all! There are so few, so very few, whose affections
are pure and disinterested, that they scarcely ever withstand the ordeal
of misfortune, or the loss of those extraneous advantages with which they
found us surrounded.”
“You speak like a book, my dear sister,” cried Lady Boleyn, laughing
aloud; “just like a book that has been sent me from France, with such
beautiful silver clasps.”
Saying this, she ran to fetch the book, which she had opened that evening
in the middle, not having sufficient curiosity to examine the title or
inquire the name of the author of the volume. She opened it naturally
at the same place, and read what follows, which was, as far as could be
discovered, the fragment of a letter:
“You ask me for the definition of a friend! In reply, I am compelled to
declare that the term has become so vague and so obscure, it has been
used in so many senses, and applied to so many persons, I shall first
be obliged to give you a description of what is called a friend in
the world--a title equivalent, in my estimation, to the most complete
indifference, intermingled at the same time with no insignificant degree
of envy and jealousy. For instance, I hear M. de Clèves speaking of his
friend M. Joyeuse, and he remarks simply: ‘I know more about him than
anybody else; I have been his most intimate friend for a great many
years; he is meanly avaricious--I have reproached him for it a hundred
times.’ A little further on, and I hear the great Prof. de Chaumont
exclaim, ‘Valentino d’Alsinois is a most charming woman; everybody is
devoted to her. But this popularity cannot last long--she is full of
vanity; intolerably conceited and silly; it really amuses me!’ I go
on still further, and meet a friend who takes me enthusiastically by
both hands: ‘Oh! I expected a visit from you yesterday, and was quite
in despair that you did not come! You know how delighted I always am to
see you, and how highly I appreciate your visits!’ But I happen to have
very keen eyes, and an ear extremely acute and delicate; and I distinctly
heard her whisper to her friend as I approached them, ‘How fortunate
I have been to escape this visit!’ What a change! I did not think it
could last long. Well, with friends like these you will find the world
crowded; they will obstruct, so to speak, every hour of your life; but it
is rare indeed to encounter one who is true and loyal, a friend of the
heart! A man truly virtuous: and sincerely religious is alone capable
of comprehending and loving with pure and exalted friendship. A man of
the world, on the contrary, accustomed to refer everything to himself,
and consulting his own desires, becomes his own idol, and on the altar
of _self_ offers up the only sincere worship of which his sordid soul is
capable. And you will find he will always end by sacrificing to his own
interests and passions the dearest interests of the being who confided in
his friendship.
“But with the sincere and earnest friend, love and gratitude are
necessities of his nature; they constitute the unbroken chain which links
all pure and reasonable friendship. He will assist his friend in all
emergencies, for he has assumed in a manner even his responsibilities.
He will never flatter; his counsel and advice, on the contrary, may be
severely administered, because it is impossible to be happy without
being virtuous, and the happiness of his friend is as dear to him as his
own. He is ready to sacrifice his own interests to those of his friend,
and none would dare attack his friend’s reputation in his presence;
for they know he will defend and sustain him under all circumstances,
sympathizing in his misfortunes, mingling tears with his tears--in a
word, that it is another self whom they would presume to attack.
“Death itself cannot dissolve the ties of such an affection--the soul,
nearer to God, will continue to implore unceasingly for him the divine
benediction. Oh! what joy, what happiness, to participate in a friendship
so pure and exalted! He who can claim one such friend possesses a source
of unbounded joy, and an inexhaustible consolation of which cruel
adversity can never deprive him. If prosperity dazzles him with its
dangerous splendor, if sorrow pierce him with her dart, if melancholy
annihilate the life of his soul, then ever near him abides this friend,
like a precious gift which God alone had power to bestow!”
* * * * *
Queen Catherine was walking in that portion of the vast grounds of
Greenwich called the Queen’s Garden, which in happier days had often been
her favorite retreat. Jets of limpid water (conveyed by means of pipes
through the grounds) burst in every direction, and then fell in silvery
showers among the lovely parterres of flowers, and covered the green
velvet turf with a glittering veil of diamond-like spray. On the bosom of
the murmuring waters floated myriads of leaves and flowers, flung with
gentle hand by the wooing breeze, while thousands of gold fishes sported
amid their crystal depths. The eye of the stranger was at once arrested
and ravished by these marvels of nature and art, admiring the power and
riches thus united; but the queen, with slow and painful steps, only
sought this solitude for liberty there to indulge her tears in silence
and oblivion.
At no great distance Mary, full of joy, engaged in the sportive plays of
the ladies of the queen. A golden insect or a brilliant butterfly was the
only conquest to which she aspired. Gaily flitting from place to place,
with step so light that her little feet scarcely impressed the delicate
white sand covering the walks, her shouts of expectation and happiness
were still powerless to rejoice the maternal heart.
Catherine hastily withdrew from the scene. Fatigued and worn with
suffering, she regarded with painful indifference all that surrounded her.
In the meantime one of the gardeners advanced towards her and presented a
bouquet.
“Give it,” said she, “to one of my ladies.” And she turned away; but the
gardener would not withdraw. “The queen does not recognize me,” he said
at length in a low voice.
“Ah! More,” exclaimed Catherine, greatly agitated. “Friend always
faithful! But why expose yourself thus to serve me? Go on. I will
follow!” And Catherine continued her walk until she reached a wide and
extended avenue planted with venerable old lindens.
“More,” she exclaimed, trembling with fear, yet still indulging a slight
hope, “what have you to tell me? Speak, oh! speak quickly! I fear we may
be observed; every step of mine is watched.”
“Madam,” cried More, “a general peace has been concluded. The emperor’s
difficulty with the Holy See is ended; he consents to surrender all the
conquered territory originally belonging to the Ecclesiastical States.
He binds himself to re-establish the dominion of the Medici in Florence;
he abandons Sforza, leaving the Pope absolute master of the destiny
of that prince and the sovereignty of the Milanese. Urged on by these
concessions, the two princesses cut short their negotiations, and the
treaty between France and Austria was concluded immediately. Your appeal
and protestation have been despatched, and conveyed safely out of the
kingdom. The messenger to whom they were entrusted was most rigorously
searched, but the papers were so securely and adroitly concealed they
were not discovered. They were carried to Antwerp by Peter Gilles, the
‘friend of my heart,’ and from thence he despatched them to Rome. Hope,
therefore hope; let us all hope!”
“Ah! More,” replied the queen, who had listened with deep anxiety, “would
that I were able to acknowledge your services as I appreciate them.
Your friendship has been my only consolation. But I know not why it is,
hope every day grows more and more faint in my heart. And so utterly
insensible to joy have I become that it seems now I am incapable of aught
but suffering, and that for me I fear greater sorrow is to be added.”
“What do you say, madam?” replied More. “How sadly discouraging and
painful to your servants to hear such reflections from you at the very
moment when everything becomes favorable to your cause. The emperor will
use his influence at the court of Rome, and Francis, between the two
allies, will at least be forced to remain neutral.”
“What were the conditions of the Treaty of Cambrai?” asked the queen.
“They were very hard and exacting,” replied More. “The king of France
entirely renounces his pretensions to Burgundy and Italy; thus nine years
of war, the battle of Pavia, and a humiliating captivity, become of no
avail. He sacrifices all, even his allies. Fearing to add to these harsh
conditions the reconciliation of their interests, he abandoned to the
mercy of the emperor, without the slightest stipulation, the Venetians,
the Florentines, the Duke of Ferrara, and the Neapolitan barons who were
attached to his arms.”
“What a cruel error!” exclaimed the queen. “The prince has surely
forgotten that even in political and state affairs, he who once
sacrifices his friends cannot hope to recall them ever again to his
support. It is very evident that he has not more prudent nor wise
counsellors in his cabinet than skilful and accomplished generals in the
field. Who now among them all can be compared with Pescaire, Anthony de
Lêve, or the Prince of Orange?”
“He might have had them, madam, if his own negligence and the wickedness
of his courtiers had not alienated and driven them away. The Constable
of Bourbon, Moran, and Doria would have powerfully counterbalanced the
talents and influence of the chiefs you have just named, had the king of
France engaged them in his own cause, instead of having to encounter them
in the ranks of his enemies. His undaunted courage and personal valor,
however, have alone caused the unequal and hopeless contest to be so long
continued.”
“And what does your king say of these affairs?” asked the queen,
anxiously.
“Alas! madam, he seems but little satisfied,” responded More, hesitating.
“That is just as I suspected,” replied the queen. “Yes, it is because
he foresees new obstacles to the unjust divorce he is prosecuting with
so much ardor. O More!” she continued, bursting into tears, “what have
I done to merit such cruel treatment? When I look back on the happy
years of my youth, the years when he loved me so tenderly; when I recall
the devoted and affectionate demonstrations of those days, and compare
them with the actual rudeness and severity of the present, my bleeding
heart is crushed by this sorrow! What have I done, More, to lose thus so
suddenly and entirely my husband’s affection? It is true, the freshness
of my early youth has faded, but was it to such ephemeral advantages
alone I owed his devotion? Can a marriage be contracted by a man with
the intention of dissolving it as soon as the personal attractions, the
youthful charms, of his wife have faded? Oh! it seems to me it should be
just the contrary, and that the hour of affliction should only call forth
deeper proofs of affection. No, More, no! neither you nor any other of my
friends will be able to accomplish anything for me. I feel that my life
is rapidly ebbing away; that my spirit is crushed and broken for ever.
For admitting, even, that Henry will not be successful in his attempt
to sever the sacred bonds of our union, what happiness could I ever
hope to enjoy near one to whom I had become an object of aversion--who
would behold in me only an invincible obstacle to his will and the
gratification of his criminal and disorderly passions?”
“Alas! madam,” replied More, “we are all grieved at the contemplation of
the great affliction by which you are overwhelmed, and how much do we
wish the expression of our sympathy and devotion had power to relieve
you. But remember the Princess of Wales--you will surely never cease to
defend her rights.”
“Never, never!” exclaimed the queen passionately. “That is the sole
inducement I have once more to arouse myself--it sustains my courage
and animates my resolution, when health and spirits both fail. O More!
could you but know all that passes in the depths of my soul; could
you but realize, for one moment, the anguish and agony, the deep
interior humiliation, into which I am plunged! Oh! fatal and for ever
unfortunate day when I left my country and the royal house of my father!
Why was I not born in obscurity? Would not my life then have passed
quietly and without regret? Far from the tumult of the world and the
éclat of thrones, I should have been extremely happy. Now I am dying
broken-hearted and unknown.”
“Is it really yourself, madam,” answered More, “who thus gives way to
such weakness? Truly, it is unworthy of your rank, and still more of
your virtues. When adversity overtakes us, we should summon all our
courage and resolution. You are our queen, and you should remember your
daughter is born sovereign of this realm, beneath whose soil our buried
forefathers sleep. No, no! Heaven will never permit the blood of such
a race to be sullied by that of an ambitious and degraded woman. That
noble race will triumph, be assured of it; and in that triumph the honor
of our country will shine forth with renewed glory and splendor. I
swear it by my head, and hope it in my heart!” As he said these words,
footsteps were heard, and Catherine perceived the king coming towards
them. She turned instantly pale, but, remaining calm in the dangerous
crisis, made a sign for More to withdraw. The king immediately approached
her, and, observing with heartless indifference the traces of recent
tears on her cheek, exclaimed:
“Always in tears!” Then, assuming a playful manner, he continued: “Come,
Kate, you must confess that you are always singularly sad and depressed,
and the walls of a convent would suit you much better than this beautiful
garden. You have in your hand a fine bouquet; I see at least you still
love flowers.”
“I do indeed,” replied the queen, with a deep sigh.
“Well,” said Henry, “I do not mean to reproach you, but it would be
advisable not to hold those roses so close to your cheek; the contrast
might be unfavorable--is it not so, my old Kate? Have you seen the
falcons just sent me from Scotland? They are of a very rare species, and
trained to perfection. I am going out now to try them.”
“I wish your majesty a pleasant morning,” answered the queen.
“Adieu, Kate,” he continued, proceeding on his way, and giving in the
exuberance of his spirits a flourish with his trumpet. Very soon the
notes of the hunting-horns announced his arrival in the outer courtyard.
He found there assembled a crowd of lords and pages, followed by
falconers, carrying the new birds on their wrists. These birds were
fettered, and wore on their heads little leathern hoods, which were to
be removed at the moment they mounted in the air in search of their
accustomed prey.
In a very short time the party rode off, and Catherine thoughtfully
entered the palace, thinking it was a long time since the king had shown
himself so indulgent and gracious towards her.
* * * * *
“Are you well assured of the truth of these statements?” said the king,
returning Cromwell a letter he had just read. “No! I will not believe
it,” he cried, stamping his foot violently on the richly-tessellated
floor of his cabinet. “I certainly hoped to have gained the legate over.”
“But your majesty may no longer indulge in this illusion,” replied
Cromwell, who stood before the king in an attitude the most humble and
servile possible to assume. “You are furnished with incontrovertible
proof; Campeggio, in order to escape your imperious commands, urges the
Pope to evoke the trial to his own tribunal. Of this there is no doubt,
for this copy of his letter I received from the hand of his confidential
secretary.”
“You are very adroit, sir,” replied the king, haughtily. “Later, I will
consider the manner of rewarding you. But I declare to you your patron
is on the brink of ruin. I shall never pardon him for permitting that
protest and appeal of the queen to reach Rome.”
“That was truly an unfortunate affair,” replied Cromwell; “but it was
perhaps not the fault of my lord, Cardinal Wolsey.”
“Whose fault was it then?” demanded Henry in the imperious tone he used
to disconcert this spy whenever his reports displeased him.
“The queen has friends,” replied Cromwell, whilst on his thin, colorless
lips hovered a false and treacherous smile, worthy of the wicked instinct
that prompted and directed all his suspicions, and made him foresee the
surest plan of injuring those whom he envied or destroying those whose
reputation he intended to attack.
“And who are they?” demanded the king, his ill-humor increasing with the
reflection. “Why do you not name them, sir?”
“Well, for instance, Sir Thomas More, whom your Majesty loads with favors
and distinctions, the Bishop of Rochester, the Duke of Norfolk, and the.…”
“You will soon accuse my entire court, and each one of my servants in
particular,” cried the king; “and in order still more to exasperate and
astound me, you have taken particular pains to select and name those whom
I most esteem, and who have always given me the sincerest proofs of their
devoted affection. Go!” he suddenly cried in a furious tone; and he fell
into one of those wild transports of rage that frequently attacked him
when his will clashed against obstacles which he foresaw he could neither
surmount nor destroy. He often passed entire days absorbed in these moods
of violence, shut up in his own apartments, suffering none to speak to or
approach him nor on any account to attempt to divert him.
Abashed and alarmed, Cromwell hastily withdrew, stammering the most
humble apologies, none of which, however, reached the ear of Henry
VIII., who, on returning to his chamber, raving in a demoniacal manner,
exclaimed:
“Vile slaves! you shall be taught to know and to respect my power. I will
make you sorely repent the hour you have dared to oppose me!”
Just as he had uttered this threatening exclamation, Cardinal Wolsey
appeared. He could not have chosen a more inauspicious moment. The
instant he beheld him, the king, glaring on him with flashing eyes, cried
out:
“Traitor! what has brought you here? Do you know the ambassadors of
Charles and Ferdinand, fortified by the queen’s appeal and protest, have
overthrown all I had accomplished at Rome with so much precaution and
difficulty? Why have you not foreseen these contingencies, and known that
the Pope would prove inflexible? Why have you not advised me against
undertaking an almost impossible thing, which will sully the honor of my
name and obscure for all time the glory of my reign.”
“Stop, sire,” replied Wolsey; “I do not deserve these cruel reproaches.
You can readily recall how earnestly I endeavored to dissuade you from
your purpose, but all my efforts were vain.”
“It is false!” cried the king, giving vent to his rage in the most
shocking and violent expressions he could command, to inflict upon his
minister. “And now,” he continued, “remember well, if you fail to extort
from your legate such a decision as I require, you shall speedily be
taught what it is to deride my commands.”
* * * * *
The sun had scarcely risen above the horizon when already Cardinal
Campeggio (whose age and infirmities had not changed the long habits of
an austere and laborious life) was silently kneeling in the midst of the
choir of the palace chapel.
The velvet cushions of his _prie-dieu_ protected him from the cold marble
of the sacred pavement, while the rays of the rising sun, descending in
luminous jets through the arches of the antique windows, fell on the head
of the venerable old man, giving him the appearance of being surrounded
by a halo of celestial light. His eyes were cast down, and he seemed to
be entirely absorbed in pious and profound meditation.
Other thoughts, however, intruded on his agitated mind, and filled him
with anxious apprehension. “The hour rapidly approaches,” he mentally
exclaimed--“the hour when it will be essential to come to a decision. I
have still hoped to receive a reply--it has not yet arrived. I alone am
made responsible, and doubtless the wrath of the king will burst upon my
head. His vengeance will be terrible. More than once already he has taken
occasion to manifest it. What cruel incertitude! What dreadful suspense!
Yet what shall be done? Speak! O my conscience!” he exclaimed, “let me
listen, and be guided by thy voice alone!”
“Despise the power of the king who demands of thee an injustice,”
immediately replied that faithful monitor whose stern and inflexible
voice will be summoned to testify against us at the last judgment.
“Sayest thou, thou art afraid? Then thou hast forgotten that the last
even of those gray hairs still remaining to thee cannot fall without the
permission of him who created the universe. Know that the anger of man
is but as a vain report--a sound that vanishes in space; and that God
permits thee not to hesitate for one instant, O judge! when the cause of
the feeble and the innocent claims all the strength of thy protection.”
Irrevocably decided, Campeggio continued his prayer, and waited without
further apprehension the decisive moment, so rapidly approaching.
In the meantime, another cardinal, Wolsey, in great anguish of mind,
contemplated with terror the approaching day when he would be compelled
to decide the fate of the queen. Weary after passing a sleepless night,
spent in reflecting on the punishment threatening him if the will of the
king was not accomplished, he had scarcely closed his eyes when a troop
of valets entered the chamber to assist at his toilet. They brought his
richest vestments, with all the insignia of his elevated rank. Wolsey
regarded them with a feeling of terror. And when they presented him the
ivory rod which the high-chancellor is alone empowered to carry, he
seized it with convulsive eagerness, grasping it in his hand, as though
he feared they would tear it from him; and with that fear the reflection
overshadowed his soul that yesterday he had made a last effort to
ascertain and influence the decision of the legate, without being able to
succeed!
Followed by his pages and gentlemen, and still harassed by these
misgivings, he arrived at Blackfriars, where the court awaited him. The
assembly of cardinals arose deferentially as he entered, though all
remarked with astonishment the pallor of his countenance and his extreme
embarrassment of manner, so invariably composed and assured. A portion of
this visible restraint was communicated to the assembly, on learning that
the king himself had arrived, and was resolved to sit in the adjoining
apartment, where he could see and hear the entire proceedings.
Dr. Bell, his advocate, after a long preamble, began a discourse,
and during its delivery hurried exclamations and hasty comments were
constantly indulged in by the excited assembly, so different in their
hopes, desires, and opinions.
“O Rochester,” cried More, invested with the grand official robes of the
king’s exchequer, “do you think this man will succeed with his arguments
in carrying the crown by storm?”
“No, no,” replied Rochester, “and especially as he wishes to place it
upon such a head.”
“But listen, listen!” exclaimed More, “he declares the brief of
dispensation to have been a fraud.”
“Ah! what notorious bad faith!” murmured the bishop.
“What answer can they make to that?” said Viscount Rochford, in another
part of the hall, addressing the lords belonging to Anne Boleyn’s party.
“It is certainly encouraging; we cannot doubt of our success now.”
But at length the arguments, principally dictated by Henry himself, were
closed; his advocate demanding, in the most haughty and authoritative
manner, that a decision should at once be rendered, and that it should
be as favorable as it was prompt. The king during this time, in a state
of great excitement, paced to and fro before the entrance of the hall,
the door being left open by every one in passing, as if he were afraid
to close it behind him. He surveyed from time to time, with a glance
of stern, penetrating scrutiny, the assembly before him, each member
of which tried to conceal his true sentiments--some because they were
secretly attached to the queen, others through fear that the cause of
Anne Boleyn might ultimately triumph. When the advocate had finished
his discourse, each one sat in breathless suspense anxiously waiting
the queen’s reply; but not recognizing the authority or legality of the
tribunal, she had refused to accept counsel, and no one consequently
appeared to defend her. Profound silence reigned throughout the assembly,
and all eyes were turned toward Campeggio, who arose and stood ready to
speak. The venerable old man, calm and dignified, in a mild but firm and
decided tone began:
“You ask, or rather you demand,” he said, “that we pronounce a decision
which it would be impossible for us in justice to render.” Here, on
seeing the king turn abruptly around and confront him, he paused, looking
steadily at him. “Knowing that the defendant hath challenged this
court, and refused to recognize in our persons loyal and disinterested
judges, I have considered it my duty, in order to avoid error, to submit
every part of the proceedings of this council to the tribunal of the
Sovereign Pontiff; and we shall be compelled to await his decision before
rendering judgment or proceeding further. For myself individually, I will
furthermore affirm, that I am here to render justice--strict, entire, and
impartial justice, and no earthly power can induce me to deviate from
the course I have adopted or the resolutions I have taken; and I boldly
declare that I am too old, too feeble, and too ill to desire the favor
or fear the resentment of any living being.” Here he sat down, visibly
agitated.
Had a thunderbolt fallen in the midst of the assembly, the tumult and
astonishment could not have been greater. Anger, joy, fear, hope--all
hearts were agitated by the most contradictory emotions; while nothing
was heard but the deep murmur of voices, the noise of unintelligible
words, as they crossed and clashed in an endless diversity of tones.
The Duke of Suffolk, brother-in-law of the king, cried out, beating his
fists violently on the table before him, with the gross impetuosity of an
upstart soldier, that the old adage had again been verified; “Never did
a cardinal do any good in England.” And with flashing eyes and furious
gestures he pointed to Cardinal Wolsey. The cardinal at once comprehended
his danger, but found it impossible not to resent the insult. He arose,
pale with anger, and with forced calmness replied that the duke, of
all living men, had the least cause to depreciate cardinals. For,
notwithstanding he had himself been a very insignificant cardinal, yet,
if he had not held the office, the Duke of Suffolk would not this day
actually carry his head on big shoulders. “And you would not now,” he
added, “be here to exhibit the ostentatious disdain you have manifested
toward those who have never given you cause of offence. If you were, my
lord, an ambassador of the king to some foreign power, you would surely
not venture to decide important questions without first consulting your
sovereign. We also are commissioners, and we have no power to pronounce
judgment, without first consulting those from whom we derive our
authority; we can do neither more nor less than our commissions permit.
Calm yourself, then, my lord, and no more address, in this insulting
manner, your best friend. You very well know all I have done for you,
and you must also acknowledge that on no occasion have I ever referred to
your obligations before.”
But the Duke of Suffolk heard nothing of the last words uttered by
Wolsey. Exasperated beyond measure, he abruptly turned his back on the
cardinal and went to join the king in the next apartment. He found the
latter in the act of retiring, being no longer able to restrain his wrath
within bounds; and as his courtiers entered and stood regarding him with
a look of hesitation he went out, commanding them in a fierce tone and
with an imperious gesture to follow him immediately.
Meanwhile, in the council chamber the utmost confusion prevailed. “God be
praised!” cried Sir Thomas More, who in the simplicity of his heart and
the excess of his joy was incapable of dissimulation or concealment. “God
be praised! Our queen is still queen; and may she ever triumph thus over
all her enemies!”
Ensconced in the deep embrasure of a window stood Cromwell, a silent
observer of the scene; not permitting a word to escape him, but gathering
up every sentence with keen avidity, and cherishing it in his envious
and malicious memory. He found himself, nevertheless, in a precarious
and embarrassing situation. Foreseeing the downfall and disgrace of
Wolsey, he had sought to make friends by betraying his benefactor. But
the king treated him with indignant scorn, Viscount Rochford with supreme
contempt, and he strongly suspected he had prejudiced his sister, Anne
Boleyn, also against him.
Anxious and alarmed, he at once determined to begin weaving a new web of
intrigue, and instantly cast about him to discover what hope remained, or
what results the future might possibly bring forth from the discord and
difficulties reigning in the present.
When selfish, corrupt creatures like Cromwell find themselves surrounded
by great and important events, they at once assume to become identified
with the dearest interests of the community in which they live, without
however in reality being in the slightest degree affected, unless through
their own interests--seeking always themselves, and themselves alone.
Thus this heartless man, this shameful leprosy of the social body that
had nurtured him, regarding the whole world entirely with reference to
his own selfish designs, coolly speculated upon his premeditated crimes,
revolving in his mind a thousand projects of aggrandizement, which he
ultimately succeeded in bringing to a culpable but thoroughly successful
termination.
* * * * *
The night had already come, yet all were in a state of commotion in the
household of the French ambassador, in consequence of William du Bellay,
his brother, having at a late hour received a few hasty lines from the
bishop, written in the midst of the assembly at Blackfriars, commanding
him to hold himself in readiness to depart.
The young envoy, at once obeying orders, assumed his travelling costume,
and had scarcely more than attended to the last instructions of his
brother when the latter made his appearance.
“Well, brother,” he exclaimed on entering the chamber, “all is over.
Are you ready to set out?” he continued, hurriedly surveying his
brother’s travelling attire. “The king is furiously enraged--first
against the legate, then against Wolsey. But Campeggio has displayed an
extraordinary degree of firmness and courage. After he had refused to
pronounce the decision, and just as the king was retiring, the expected
courier arrived with instructions from Rome. The queen’s protestation
has been received, and the Pope, dissolving the council, revokes the
commissioners’ authority, and requires the case to be brought before his
own tribunal. The adherents of Catherine, as you may suppose, are wild
with delight--the people throng the streets, shouting ‘Long live the
queen!’ Our gracious king, Francis I., will be in despair.”
“Well,” replied William, “I am satisfied, for I am in favor of the
queen. And now, between ourselves, my dear brother, laying all diplomacy
aside--for we are alone, and these walls have no ears--I know as well as
you that it matters not to our king whether the wife of Henry VIII. be
named Anne or Catherine.
“And yet, after all, it may be the name of this new Helen will become the
signal for war,” replied the bishop. “You forget that in marrying Anne
Boleyn Henry will be compelled to seek an alliance with France, in order
to resist the opposition of the Emperor Charles V.; and as for ourselves,
we have use for the five thousand crowns he has promised to assist us
in paying the ransom of the children of France. This family quarrel
can be arranged so entirely to our advantage that it would really be a
misfortune should it come to a sudden termination. I hope, however, such
may not be the result.”
“You are right, brother,” said Du Bellay, laughing. “I see I have too
much heart to make a skilful diplomatist. I have already let myself
become ensnared, you perceive, and drawn over to the cause of this Queen
Catherine. But it is nevertheless a veritable fact, while families
are engaged in disputing among themselves, they generally leave their
neighbors in peace. It would seem, however, the king must have become
a madman or a fool, thus to ignore kindred, allies, fortune, and
kingdom--all for this Lady Anne.”
“Yes, much more than a madman,” replied his brother, phlegmatically;
“after he has married her, he will be cured of his insanity. But
come, now, let us leave Lady Anne and her affairs. You must know that
immediately after the adjournment of the cardinals, the king sent for
me. I found him terribly excited, walking rapidly up and down the great
hall formerly used as a chapter-room by the monks. Wolsey alone was with
him, standing near the abbot’s great arm-chair, and wearing an air of
consternation. The instant he saw me approaching, he cried out, ‘Come,
come, my lord, the king wishes to have your advice on the subject we are
now discussing.’ And I at once perceived my presence was a great relief
to him.
“The king spoke immediately, while his eyes flashed fire. ‘M. du Bellay,’
he exclaimed, ‘Campeggio shall be punished!--yes, punished! Parliament
shall bring him to trial! I will never submit to defeat in this matter. I
will show the Pope that he has underrated both my will and my power.’
“‘Sire,’ I answered, ‘after mature reflection, it seems to me it would be
a mistaken policy in your majesty to resort to such violent measures.
Nothing has yet been decided, and the case is by no means hopeless;
the wisest course would therefore be to restrain all manifestation of
displeasure toward Campeggio. What advantage could you possibly gain by
insulting or ill-treating an old man whom you have invited into your
kingdom, or how could you then expect to obtain a favorable decision from
the Holy See?’
“Delighted to hear me express such opinions, Wolsey eagerly caught at
my words, declaring he agreed with me entirely. He also advised that
the doctors of the French and German universities should be consulted,
opinions favorable to the divorce obtained from them, and afterwards this
high authority brought to bear upon the decision of the court of Rome.
“‘What do you think of that?’ demanded the king of me. ‘As for His
Eminence Monseigneur Wolsey,’ he added, in a tone of cruel contempt,
his counsels have already led me into so many difficulties, or proved
so worthless, I shall not trouble him for any further advice.’ And he
abruptly turned his back on the cardinal.
“A tear rolled slowly down Wolsey’s hollow cheek, but he made no reply. I
at once assured the king that I thought, on the contrary, the cardinal’s
advice was most excellent, and doubted not our king, and his honored
mother, Madame Louise, might be induced to use their influence in order
to secure him the suffrages of the University of Paris. Whereupon he
appeared very much pleased with me, and bowed me out in the most gracious
manner imaginable.
“Report all these things faithfully to your master; tell him I fear the
downfall of Wolsey is inevitable; he is equally disliked by the queen’s
adherents and those of Anne Boleyn, and I have every reason for believing
he will never again be reinstated in the king’s favor. You will also say
to him he need not be astonished that I so often send him despatches
by express, as Cardinal Wolsey informs me confidentially that the Duke
of Suffolk has his emissaries bribed to open all packages of letters
sent by post, and that one addressed to me has been miscarried; which
circumstance troubles me very much.”
“I will also inform my master,” replied William, “that the Picardy routes
are so badly managed, the gentlemen and couriers he sends are constantly
detained and kept a considerable time on the journey. I have complained
recently to the authorities themselves, who assure me that their salaries
are not paid, and consequently they are unable to keep the routes in
better condition.”
* * * * *
The sun descended toward the horizon. Sir Thomas More, seated on a
terrace of his mansion at Chelsea, sought temporary quiet and repose
from the oppressive burdens of a life every hour of which was devoted to
the service of his king and country. His young children formed a joyous
group around him, their flaxen heads crowned with blades of wheat and
wild flowers they had gathered in the fields, for it was the golden
time of harvest. Margaret, assisted by William Roper, directed their
games, and was now trying to teach them a Scotch dance, marking the
wild, fantastical rhythm with the notes of her sweet, melodious voice.
Sir Thomas himself had joined in their play, when suddenly the king
made his appearance. He had many times already honored them with such
visits since Sir Thomas became a member of the council, having apparently
conceived a great affection for him, and every day seeming to become more
and more pleased with his conversation.
“I know not why it is,” he would often say, “but when I have been for
any length of time in conversation with More I experience a singular
tranquillity of soul, and indeed feel almost happy. His presence has the
magical effect of lulling my cares to sleep and calming my anxieties.”
On seeing the king, More immediately advanced with great deference to
receive him, while the children at once left off their sports.
“Why, what is this?” he exclaimed; “I did not come to interrupt your
amusements, but on the contrary to enjoy them with you.” But the
wild mirth and _abandon_ of the children had fled at the approach of
royalty, and, in spite of these kind assurances, they withdrew in rapid
succession, too glad to recover their liberty, and their father was thus
left alone with the king.
“Who is the young man I see here?” inquired the sovereign.
“He is the affianced husband of my daughter, sire; his name is William
Roper,” answered More.
“What! is she affianced already?” said the king.
“Yes, sire; the family of Roper has for many years been united to ours
by the sincerest ties of friendship, and, strengthening these by ties of
blood, we hope greatly to increase our mutual happiness.”
“That is so,” replied the king. “And they will doubtless be happy.
In your families you preserve liberty of choice, while we princes,
born to thrones, sacrifice our interior happiness to those political
combinations demanded by the interests of our subjects.”
“But,” replied Sir Thomas--who understood at once the king’s intention
was to introduce the subject of his divorce, a topic he especially
wished to avoid--“I believe that happiness depends on ourselves, on our
dispositions, and the manner in which we conduct our affairs, a great
deal more than on circumstances, or the social position in which we
chance to be born. There are some who, possessing every advantage in
life, are still unable to enjoy it. We would suppose them to be perfectly
happy, and they really should be so; but true happiness consists alone
in tranquillity of soul, which is attained by always doing good to
others, and suffering with patient submission the trials and afflictions
with which life is inevitably beset. Such, it seems to me, is the
circumscribed circle in which man is confined; it is well with him so
long as he accommodates himself to its legitimate limits, but all is lost
the moment he endeavors to venture beyond it.”
“I am every day more entirely convinced that this figure of the circle is
a painful reality,” replied the king, with ill-concealed impatience. “I
have always hoped to find happiness in the pursuit of pleasure--in the
gratification of every desire--and believed it might thus be attained,
but never yet have I been able to grasp it.”
“Which means, your majesty expected to pass through the world without
trials--a thing utterly impossible,” added More, smiling.
“It is that which makes me despair, my dear Thomas. Reflecting on the
bitter disappointments I have experienced, I am often almost transported
with rage. No, More, you can never understand me. You are always equally
calm and joyous. Your desires are so happily directed that you can feel
well assured of a peaceful, quiet future awaiting you.”
“Your majesty is entirely mistaken,” replied More, “if you believe I
have never entertained other desires than those I have been able to
accomplish. The only secret I possess, in that respect, is, I compel my
inclinations to obey _me_, instead of making my will subservient to them.
Nevertheless, they oftentimes rebel and contend bitterly for supremacy,
but then, it is only necessary to command silence, and not be disturbed
by their cries and lamentations. Ultimately, they become like refractory
children, who, constantly punished and severely beaten, at last are made
to tremble at the very thought of the chastisement, and no longer dare to
revolt.”
“This explanation of your system of self-government is very ingenious,”
replied the king; “and hearing you speak in this quiet manner one would
be induced to believe it were the easiest thing imaginable to accomplish,
rather than the most difficult. Ah!” he continued with a deep sigh, “I
understand but too well _how_ difficult.”
“It is true,” replied More with earnest simplicity, “and I would not deny
that, far from being agreeable, it is often, on the contrary, exceedingly
painful and difficult for a man to impose these violent restraints
upon his inclinations. But if he who hesitates on all occasions in the
practice of virtue to do this necessary violence to himself and remain
faithful to the requirements of duty, would reflect but for a single
instant, he will find that although at first he may escape suffering and
privation by voluntarily abandoning himself to his passions, yet, later,
he will inevitably be made to endure a far more bitter humiliation in the
torturing reproaches of conscience; the shame he will suffer in the loss
of self-respect and the respect of others; and, in the inevitable course
of events, he will at last discover that his passions have carried him
far beyond the power of self-control or reformation!”
“Let us banish these reflections, my dear More,” exclaimed the king in a
petulant tone, passing his hand across his forehead; “they distress me,
and I prefer a change of subject.” Saying this he arose, and, putting his
arm around Sir Thomas’ neck, they walked on together toward the extremity
of the garden, which terminated in an extensive and beautiful terrace, at
the foot of which flowed the waters of the Thames.
The view was an extended one, and the king amused himself watching the
rapid movements of the little boats, filled with fishermen, rowing in
every direction, drawing in the nets, which had been spread to dry on the
reeds covering the banks of the river. Quantities of water-lilies, blue
flowers, floating on their large brilliant green leaves, intermingled
with the dark bending heads of the reeds, presenting to the distant
observer the appearance of a beautiful variegated carpet of flowers.
“What a charming scene!” said the king, gazing at the prospect, and
pointing to a boat just approaching the opposite side of the river to
land a troop of young villagers, who with their bright steel sickles in
hand were returning from the harvest fields.
“And the graceful spire of your Chelsea belfry, gleaming in the distance
through the light silvery clouds, completes this charming landscape,” he
added.
“Would it were possible to transport this view to the end of one of my
drives in St. James’ Park,” continued the king.
“Will it be very soon completed?” asked Sir Thomas, at a loss what to say
to his royal visitor.
“I hope so,” replied Henry languidly, “but these architects are so
very slow. Before going to Grafton, I gave them numerous orders on the
subject.”
“Your majesty has been quite pleased with your journey, I believe,”
replied Sir Thomas, instantly reflecting what he should say next.
“I should have been extremely well pleased,” he answered, with a sudden
impatience of manner, “had Wolsey not persisted so obstinately in
following me. I have been much too indulgent,” he continued sharply,
“infinitely too indulgent towards him, and am now well convinced of the
mistake I have made in retaining the slightest affection for a man who
has so miserably deceived me. What would you think, More,” he continued,
his manner suddenly changing, “if I appointed you in his place as lord
chancellor?” And, turning towards Sir Thomas, he gazed fixedly in his
eyes, as if to read the inmost emotions of his soul.
“What would I think?” answered More, calmly--then adding with a careless
smile, “I should think your majesty had done a very wrong thing, and made
a very bad choice.”
“Well, I believe I could not possibly make a better,” said the king,
emphasizing the last words. “But I have not come here to discuss business
matters; rather, on the contrary, to get rid of them. Come, then,
entertain me with something more agreeable.” But the words designedly
(though with seeming unconcern) uttered by the king cast a sudden gloom
over the spirit of Sir Thomas he vainly endeavored to dispel.
“Sire, your majesty is greatly mistaken in entertaining such an idea,” he
said, stammering and confused; for, with his sincere and truthful nature,
More under all circumstances resolutely looked to the end of everything
in which he suspected the least dissimulation.
The king whirled round on his heel, pretending not to hear him. “This
is a beautiful rose,” he said, stooping down, “a very beautiful
variety--come from the seed, no doubt? Are you a gardener? I am very fond
of flowers. Oh! my garden will be superb.”
“Sire,” said More, still pursuing his subject.
“I must have a cutting of that rose--do you hear me, More?” As he ran on
in this manner, to prevent Sir Thomas from speaking, the silvery notes of
a bell were heard, filling the air with a sweet and prolonged vibrating
sound.
“What bell is that?” asked the king.
“The bell of our chapel, sire,” replied More, “summoning us to evening
prayers, which we usually prefer saying all together. But to-day, your
majesty having honored us with a visit, there will be no obligation to
answer the call.”
“By all means,” replied Henry. “Let me interfere with nothing. It is
almost night: come. We will return, and I will join in your devotions.”
Sir Thomas conducted him through the shrubbery towards the chapel, a
venerable structure in the Anglo-Saxon style of architecture. A thick
undergrowth of briers, brambles, and wild shrubbery was matted and
interlaced around the foundation of the building; running vines clambered
over the heavy arches of the antique windows, and fell back in waving
garlands upon the climbing branches from which they had sprung. The
walls, of rough unhewn stone, were thickly covered with moss and ivy,
giving the little structure an appearance of such antiquity that the most
scrupulous antiquarian would have unhesitatingly referred its foundation
to the time of King Athelstan or his brother Edmund. The interior was
adorned with extreme care and taste. A bronze lamp, suspended before
the altar, illuminated a statue of the Holy Virgin placed above it. The
children of Sir Thomas, with the servants of his household, were ranged
in respectful silence behind the arm-chair of his aged father. Margaret
knelt beside him with her prayer-book, waiting to begin the devotions.
The touching voice of this young girl as she slowly repeated the sublime
words--“Our Father who art in heaven”--those words which men may so
joyfully pronounce, which teach us the exalted dignity of our being, the
grandeur of our origin and destiny--those sublime words penetrated the
soul of the king with a profound and singular emotion.
“What a happy family!” he exclaimed, mentally. “Nothing disturbs their
harmony; day after day passes without leaving a regret behind it. Why can
I not join in this sweet prayer--why, O my soul, hast thou banished and
forgotten it?” He turned from the contemplation of these youthful heads
bowed before the Mother of God, and a wave of bitter remorse swept once
again over his hardened, hypocritical soul.
After the king had returned to his royal palace and the evening repast
was ended, William Roper approached Sir Thomas and said:
“You must consider yourself most fortunate, my dear father, in enjoying
so intimately the favor of his majesty--why, even Cardinal Wolsey cannot
boast of being honored with such a degree of friendship and familiarity.”
With a sad smile More, taking the young man’s hand, replied:
“Know, my son, I can never be elated by it. If this head, around which he
passed his royal arm so affectionately this evening, could in falling pay
the price of but one single inch of French territory, he would, without a
moment’s hesitation, deliver it up to the executioner.”
* * * * *
“What acknowledgments do I not owe you, madam,” said Sir Thomas Cheney to
Lady Anne Boleyn, “for the services you have rendered me. But dare I hope
for a full pardon from the king?”
“Feel perfectly secure on that point,” replied Lady Anne. “He is
convinced that Wolsey had you banished from court because of your
disagreement with Cardinal Campeggio, and he considers you now one of his
most faithful adherents.”
“And I hope, madam, to have the happiness of proving to you that I am
none the less faithfully your servant,” replied Sir Thomas Cheney.
“You must admit now,” said Lady Anne, addressing her father and brother,
the Earl of Wiltshire and the Viscount Rochford, who were both present,
“that I succeed in doing what I undertake.”
“You succeed in what you undertake,” replied her father humorously, “but
you are a long time in deciding what to do. For instance, Cardinal Wolsey
finds himself to-day occupying a position in which he has no right to be.”
“Ah! well, he will not remain in it very long,” replied Anne Boleyn,
petulantly. “This morning the king told me the ladies would attend the
chase to see the new falcons the king of France has sent him by Monsieur
de Sansac. I will talk to him, and insist on his having nothing more to
do with this horrid cardinal, or I shall at once quit the court. But,”
she added, pausing suddenly with an expression of extreme embarrassment,
“how should I answer were he to demand what his eminence Monseigneur
Wolsey had ever done to _me_?”
“Here, sister, here is your answer,” replied Viscount Rochford, taking a
large manuscript book from his father’s portfolio. “Take it and read for
yourself; you will find here all you would need for a reply.”
“That great book!” cried Anne, strongly opposed to this new commission,
and pouting like a spoilt child. Taking the book, she read--skipping a
great deal, however--a minutely detailed statement, formally accusing
Wolsey of having engaged in a secret correspondence with France, and with
the most adroit malice misrepresenting every act of his administration as
well as of his private life.
“What! can all this be true?” cried Anne Boleyn, closing the book.
“Certainly true,” replied Rochford. “And furthermore, you should know,
the cardinal, in order to reward Campeggio for the good services he has
rendered _you_, has persuaded the king to send him home loaded with rich
presents, to conciliate the Pope, he says, by his filial submission and
pious dispositions, and incline him to a favorable decision. That is the
way he manages,” continued Rochford, shrugging his shoulders, “and keeps
you in the most humiliating position ever occupied by a woman.”
Hearing her brother speak thus, the beautiful face of Anne Boleyn became
instantly suffused with a deep crimson.
“Oh! that odious man,” she cried passionately. “I shall no longer submit
to it. It is to insult me he makes such gracious acknowledgments to that
old cardinal. I will complain to the king. Oh! how annoying all this is,
though,” and she turned the book over and over in her white hands.
“But see, it is time to start,” she added, pointing to a great clock
standing in one corner of the apartment. “Good-by; I must go!” And
Anne, attired in an elegant riding-habit, abruptly turning to a mirror,
proceeded to adjust her black velvet riding-cap, when, observing a small
plume in her hat that was not arranged to her taste, she exclaimed,
violently stamping her little foot:
“How many contradictions shall I meet this day? I cannot endure it! All
those horrid affairs to think of, to talk about and explain; all your
recommendations to follow in the midst of a delightful hunting party; and
then, after all, this hat which so provokes me! No; I can never fix it.”
And she hurried away to find a woman skilled in the arts of the toilet.
But after making her sew and rip out again, bend the plume and straighten
it, place it forward and then back, she did not succeed in fixing it to
suit the fancy of Anne Boleyn, who, seeing the time flying rapidly, ended
by cutting off the plume with the scissors, throwing it angrily on the
floor and stamping it, putting the offending cap on her head without a
plume; then mounting her horse she rode off, accompanied by Sir Thomas
Cheney, who escorted her, knowing she was to join the king on the road.
“How impulsive and thoughtless your sister is,” said Earl Wiltshire to
his son, after Anne had left them, looking gloomily at the plume, still
lying on the floor where she had thrown it. “She wants to be queen! Do
you understand how much is comprised in that word? Well, she would accept
a crown and fix it on her head with the same eager interest that she
would order a new bonnet from her milliner. Yet I firmly believe, before
accepting it, she would have to be well assured by her mirror that it was
becoming to her style of beauty.”
“I cannot comprehend her,” responded Rochford. “Her good sense and
judgment sometimes astonish me; then suddenly a ball, a dress, a new
fashion has sufficed to make her forget the most important matter that
might be under discussion. I am oftentimes led to wonder whence comes
this singular mixture of frivolity and good sense in women. Is it a
peculiarity of their nature or the result of education?”
“It is entirely the fault of education, my son, and not of their
weakness. From infancy they are taught to look upon ribbons, laces,
frivolities, and fashions as the most precious and desirable things. In
fact, they attach to these miserable trifles the same value that young
men place on a brilliant armor or the success of a glorious action.”
“It may be so,” replied Rochford, “but I think they are generally found
as incompetent for business as incapable of managing affairs of state.”
“While very young, perhaps not,” answered Wiltshire; “proud and
impulsive, they are neither capable of nor inclined to dissimulation; but
later in life they develop a subtle ingenuity and an extreme degree of
penetration, that enable them to succeed most admirably.”
“Ah! well, if the truth might be frankly expressed, I greatly fear that
all this will turn out badly. Should we not succeed in espousing my
sister to the king, she will be irretrievably compromised; and then you
will deeply regret having broken off her marriage with Lord Percy.”
“You talk like an idiot,” replied the Earl of Wiltshire. “Your sister
shall reign, or I perish. Why should my house not give a queen to the
throne of England? Would it not be far better if our kings should select
wives from the nobility of their country instead of marrying foreign
princesses--strangers alike to the manners and customs as well as to the
interests of the people over whom they are destined to reign?”
“You would probably be right,” replied Viscount Rochford, “if the king
were not already married; but the clergy will always oppose this second
marriage. They do not dare to express themselves openly because they fear
the king, but in the end they will certainly preserve the nation in this
sentiment. I fear that Anne will yet be very unhappy, and I am truly
sorry now she cannot be made Countess of Northumberland.”
“Hold your tongue, my son,” cried Wiltshire, frantic with rage; “will you
repeat these things to your sister, and renew her imaginary regrets also?
As to these churchmen over whom you make so great an ado,” he continued
with a menacing gesture, “I hope soon we shall be able to relieve them
of the fortunes with which they are encumbered, and compel them to
disgorge in our favor. You say that women are weak and fickle! If so, you
certainly resemble them in both respects--the least difficulty frightens
you into changing your opinions, and you hesitate in the midst of an
undertaking that has been planned with the greatest ability, and which,
without you, I confidently believe I shall be able to accomplish.”
TO BE CONTINUED.
IS SHE CATHOLIC?
The claim put forth by the Episcopal Church--or, to use her full and
legal title, The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United Slates
of America--of being the Holy Catholic Church--Holy, Catholic, and
Apostolic--and the acceptance of her theory by a small portion of the
Christian world, makes her and her theory, for a little time, worthy our
attention.
She is accustomed to use the formula, “I believe in the Holy Catholic
Church.” It is but natural to infer that she considers herself to be at
least an integral part of that church. We have examined the question, and
thus present our convictions as to her status.
We note, in the first place, that her bishops possess no power. They are
bishops but in name. There is not one of them, no matter how eminent he
may be, who can say to a clergyman in his diocese: “Here is an important
parish vacant; occupy it.” He would be met with the polite remark from
some member of the parish, “We are very much obliged to you, bishop, but
you have nothing to say about it. Mr. M. is the warden.”
Mr. M., the warden, may be, and in many instances is, a man who cares so
little about the church that he has never yet been baptized, much less is
he a communicant. He and his brother vestrymen, whether baptized or not,
may, if the bishop claims an authority by virtue of his office, meet him
at the church door, and tell him he cannot come in unless he will pledge
himself to do as they wish; and the bishop may write a note of protest,
and leave it behind him for them to tear up, as was done in Chicago with
Bishop Whitehouse. Some local regulations have occasionally varied the
above, but in the majority of parishes the authority is vested as we have
stated.
The bishop’s power of appointing extends to none but feeble missionary
stations; and even these put on, at their earliest convenience, the airs
of full-grown parishes.
We note an instance where a bishop wrote to a lady in a remote missionary
station, and asked regarding some funds which had been placed in her
hands by parties interested in the growth of the church in that place.
It had been specified that the money was to be used for whatever purpose
was deemed most necessary. The bishop requested that the money be paid to
the missionary toward his salary. The lady declined on the ground that
she did not like the missionary. Another request in courteous language,
as was befitting a bishop. He also stated his intention of visiting the
place shortly in his official character.
The lady’s reply equalled his own in courteous phraseology; but the
money was refused and the bishop informed that he “need not trouble
himself about making a visitation, as there was no class to be confirmed;
besides, the church had been closed for repairs, and would not be open
for some months, at least not until a new minister was settled.”
To the bishop’s positive knowledge, no repairs were needed; but he deemed
it wise to stay away, and no further steps were taken.
With the clergy in his diocese the case is not very different.
If a presbyter of any diocese chooses for any reason to go from one
parish to another for the purpose of taking up a permanent abode, he can
do so with or without consulting his bishop. In fact, the bishop has
nothing to do with it. Should the presbyter desire to remove to another
diocese, it is requisite that he obtain letters dimissory from the
bishop, and the bishop is obliged to give them. So also is the bishop in
the diocese to which he goes obliged to receive them, unless they contain
grave criminal charges.
There is, in reality, but one thing the bishop of the Protestant
Episcopal Church can do, and that is make an appointment once in three
years to confirm. So insignificant is his power in any other direction
that certain persons, ill-natured or otherwise, have fastened upon him,
whether deserved or undeserved, the name of “confirming machine.” Certain
it is that, were the power of confirming in any degree vested in the
“priests” of the church, the office of bishop might easily be dispensed
with. He would appear only as the ornamental portion of a few occasional
services. For he cannot authoritatively visit any parish, vacant or
otherwise, except on a confirmation tour; and should this be too frequent
in the estimation of the vestry, the doors of the church could be shut
against him on any plea the vestry should choose to advance.
2. He cannot increase the number of his clergy, except as parishes choose.
3. He cannot prevent a man fixing himself in the diocese if a
congregation choose to “call” him, no matter how worthy or unworthy the
man may be.
4. He cannot call a clergyman into his diocese, though every parish were
empty.
5. He cannot officiate in any church without invitation.
6. He has no church of his own, except as he officiates as rector; and
unless invited to some place, he is forced, although a bishop, to sit in
the congregation as a layman, if he do not stay at home.
And, lastly, he cannot on any account visit a parish unless the vestry of
that parish is willing.
We sum up: That so far as the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal
Church of the United States of America are concerned, they are simply
figure-heads, ornaments possessing the minimum of authority--in point of
fact, no authority at all.
Their own convention addresses are a virtual confession of the condition
of affairs as above laid down. To every one who has ever heard an
Episcopal bishop’s address, as delivered before the annual convention
of clergymen and laymen, the following sample will not appear as in the
least overdrawn:
July 10.--Visited the parish of S. John, Oakdale, and confirmed three.
July 17.--Visited the parish of Longwood, and preached and confirmed one.
July 24.--Visited S. Paul’s, and preached and confirmed two in the
forenoon. Preached also in the afternoon.
This is a very large and thriving parish.
July 26.--At Montrose I visited and confirmed one at the evening service.
July 29.--Took a private conveyance to Hillstown, and preached in the
evening; confirmed one. The rector of this parish is very energetic.
Aug. 2.--Attended the burial of a dear friend.
Aug. 7.--Attended the consecration of S. Mark’s Church in Hyde Park. It
is hoped that the difficulties in this parish are settled. The Rev. John
Waters has resigned and gone to Omaha. Mr. William Steuben is the senior
warden. May the Lord prosper him and his estimable lady!
[To continue the list would cause a tear, and we do not wish to weep.]
The address each year of a Protestant Episcopal bishop is thoroughly
exemplified in the foregoing specimen. It is the same endless list of
_enteuthen exelauneis_, varied only by the number of _parasangas_. To the
lazy grammar-boy it is a most fascinating chapter of ancient history when
he reaches the _enteuthen_ section in the _Anabasis_. There is an immense
list of them, and the lesson for that day is easy. When the first phrase
is mastered, he knows all the rest, except the occasional figures.
We once saw a reporter for a prominent Daily making a short-hand report
of an address before an illustrious diocesan gathering. Having had
some experience in the matter, he came to the meeting with his tablets
prepared. They were as follows:
VISITED AT AND CONFIRMED.
_______________ _____ _________
_______________ _____ _________
_______________ _____ _________
Three-quarters of the address was thus prepared beforehand, it only
being necessary to leave the lines sufficiently far apart to permit the
insertion of occasional notes.
By his extra care he was enabled to present the most complete report of
any paper in the city.
The specimen we have given is a fair average. In future generations, when
a classical student is given a bishop’s address to read, his labor for
that day will be easy.
Almost any bishop’s address will substantiate the statements we have
made. We refer to them freely, without wasting time in selection.
We begin a new paragraph: The system of the Protestant Episcopal Church
is eminently congregational.
If a parish chooses to “call” a given man, he is “called.”
Should the bishop “interfere” and recommend him, the recommendation,
without an exception that has ever come to our knowledge, militates
against the proposed “call.”
Should a parish desire to get rid of a pastor, it does so with or
without the consent of the bishop, as happens, in the estimation of the
wardens, to be most convenient. The officers may consult the bishop,
and, if he agree with them, well and good. The words of the diocesan are
quoted from Dan to Beersheba, and the pastor is made to feel the lack of
sympathy--“Even his bishop is against him,” is whispered by young and old.
If the bishop does not agree with them, they do not consult him again.
They proceed to accomplish what they desire as if he had no existence,
and--they always succeed.
There is a farcical canon of the Protestant Episcopal Church which says,
if a parish dismiss its rector without concurrence, it shall not be
admitted into convention until it has apologized.
It is a very easy thing for the wardens and vestrymen to address the
convention, after they have accomplished their ends, with “Your honorable
body thinks we have done wrong, and--we are sorry for it,” or something
else equally ambiguous and absurd. The officers of the parish and the
laymen of the congregation have done what they wished, and are content.
As the convention is composed principally of laymen, the sympathy is
naturally with the laymen’s side of the question. The rector is hurriedly
passed over, his clerical brethren looking helplessly on.
To get a new parish the dismissed rector must “candidate”--a feature of
clerical life most revolting to any man with a spark of manhood in him.
We note, in the next place, an utter want of unity in the Protestant
Episcopal Church.
There are High-Church and Low-Church bookstores, where the publications
of the one are discarded by the other. There are High-Church and
Low-Church seminaries, where a man, to graduate from the one, will be
looked upon inimically, at least with suspicion, by the other. There
is a High-Church “Society for the Increase of the Ministry,” where the
principal thing accomplished is the maintenance of the secretary of the
said society in a large brick house in a fashionable city, while he
claims to support a few students on two meals a day; and a Low-Church
Evangelical Society, where they require the beneficiary to subscribe to
certain articles of Low-Churchism before they will receive him.
The one society is thoroughly hostile to the other, and, in point of
fact, the latter was created in opposition to the former.
There is but one thing in common between the two, and that is
cold-shoulderism.
There are High-Church and Low-Church newspapers, in which the epithets
used by the one toward the other do not indicate even _respect_.
Some of the “church’s” ministers would no more enter a “denominational”
place of worship than they would put their hand in the fire. Others will
fraternize with everything and everybody, and when Sunday comes will
close their eyes--sometimes they roll them upward--and pray publicly:
“From heresy and schism good Lord deliver us.”
It may be necessary that there should be wranglings and bickerings within
her fold, in order to constitute her the church militant; but we cannot
forgive hypocrisy.
With some of her ministers the grand object of existence seems to be to
prove “Popery” an emanation from hell. With others the effort is equally
great to prove the Episcopal Church as a “co-ordinate” branch with the
Roman Church, and entitled to the same consideration as is paid by the
devotees of Rome to its hierarchy. In both instances--viz., High Church
and Low Church--history records failure.
We notice next the relation which the Protestant Episcopal Church holds
to the Church of England.
The English Church evidently regards the Protestant Episcopal Church of
the United States of America as a weaker sister, and not to be admitted
to doubtful disputations. She is courteous toward her, and accepts
her present of a gold alms-basin from an unrobed representative with
a certain amount of ceremony. She invites her bishops to the Lambeth
Conference, and they pay their own fare across the Atlantic; but they
confer about nothing. It is true the Protestant Episcopal Church approved
the action of the English Church in condemning Colenso; but this was a
safe thing for the English Church to present. It would have been hardly
complimentary to have their guests go home without doing something,
especially as they were not to be invited into Westminster Abbey, and
were to have nothing to do with the coming Bible revision.
The bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of
America were invited to the English conference very much as country
cousins are invited to tea, and that was all.
By way of asserting her right to a recognition as an equal with
the Church of England, she--the Protestant Episcopal Church of the
United States of America--has established, or rather individuals have
established and the act has received the sanction of the General
Convention, certain rival congregations in a few foreign cities where
the English service was already established. If she be of the same
Catholic mould as the Church of England, why does she thus in a foreign
city attempt to maintain an opposition service? The variations in the
Prayer-Book are no answer to the question. If the English Church be Holy,
Catholic, and Apostolic, and the Protestant Episcopal Church be Holy,
Catholic, and Apostolic, the two are therefore one; for they both claim
that there is but one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic church.
She is in this case unmistakably uncatholic, or else the English Church
is. In either case she falls to the ground.
Our attention is directed again to the many laws enacted against her
bishops as compared with the laws enacted against the other members of
the church. If Mosheim were to be restored to the flesh, and were to
write the history of the Episcopal Church, and used as an authority
the Digest of Canons, as he has been accustomed in his _Ecclesiastical
History_ to use ecclesiastical documents generally, he would style the
bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church a set of criminals of the
deepest dye, and the priests and deacons not much better. The laity would
be regarded as all that could be desired in lofty integrity and spotless
morality. For why? A glance at their vade-mecum of law--the Digest of
Canons--shows an immense bulk of its space to be devoted “to the trial of
a bishop.” The laity go scot-free.
We question the propriety, as well as the Catholicity, of covering the
higher clergy with laws till they are helpless, while the laity revel in
a freedom that amounts, when they choose, to mob-license; but it is done,
and the Episcopal Church is degraded to a level lower than any of the
denominations around her.
With other bodies who call themselves Christian there is a certain amount
of consistency. Their rulers are from among their own members. With the
church under consideration, her rulers, in many cases, are any unbaptized
heathen who may choose to work themselves into a temporary favor with the
pew-holders. It is not necessary that they should even have ever attended
church. We note an instance where the chief man of a small parish was a
druggist, and kept in the rear of his drug-store a low drinking-room;
and this man was elected treasurer year after year by a handful of
interested parties, and, when elected, he managed all the finances of the
parish according to his own notions of propriety. It was his habit to go
to the church near the close of the sermon, and go away immediately after
the collection.
We note another instance where a warden visited the rector of his parish,
and threatened, with a polite oath, to give him something hotter than
a section of the day of judgment if he did not ask his (the warden’s)
advice a little more on parish matters. The parish grew so warm that at
the end of three weeks the rector was candidating for another.
We note another instance where a warden was so overjoyed at having
settled a rector according to his own liking that, on the arrival of the
new incumbent, he not only did not go to hear him preach, but stayed at
home with certain friends, and enjoyed, to use his own expression, a
“dooced big drunk.” Out of consideration for the feelings of his family
we use the word “dooced” instead of his stronger expression.
The rector of this happily-ruled parish was imprudent enough to incur
the displeasure of his warden after a few months of arduous labor. He
received a note while sitting at the bedside of his sick wife, saying
that after the following Sunday his services would be dispensed with;
that if he attempted to stay, the church would be closed for repairs.
We are well acquainted with a parish where a congregation wished to
displace both the senior and junior wardens. These two gentlemen had
been shrewd enough to foresee the event. They succeeded, by calculating
management, in having vested in themselves the right of selling pews.
When Easter Monday came, they sold for a dollar a pew to loafers on the
streets, and swarmed the election with men who never had entered the
place before. The laws of the parish were such that there was no redress.
As a matter of course, the rector was soon candidating.
During the earliest portion of the official life of one of the oldest and
most eminent bishops, he was called on to officiate at the institution of
a Low-Church rector. At the morning service the bishop took occasion to
congratulate the congregation on the assumed fact that they had now “an
altar, a priest, and a sacrifice,” and went on to enlarge on that idea.
In the evening of the same day the instituted minister, in addressing
the congregation, said: “My brethren, so help me God! if the doctrines
you heard this morning are the doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal
Church, then I am no Protestant Episcopalian; but they are not such”--and
essayed substantiating the assertion. All that came of the affair was the
publication, on the part of each, of their respective discourses. On the
supposition of the bishop’s having any foundation for his ecclesiastical
character and for the doctrines he taught, would that have been the end
of the matter?
Can it be that the Episcopal Church is Catholic? Is it possible that she
is part of the grand structure portrayed by prophets and sung in the
matchless words of inspiration as that against which the gates of hell
shall not prevail? Rather, we are forced to class her as a “sister” among
the very “heretics” from whom in her litany she prays, “Good Lord deliver
us.”
ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,”
ETC.
CHAPTER X.
ALARMING SYMPTOMS.
November had come, and was gathering up the last tints and blossoms
of autumn. One by one the garden lights were being put out; the tall
archangel lilies drooped their snow and gold cups languidly; the jasmine,
that only the other day twinkled its silver stars amidst the purple bells
of the clematis, now trailed wearily down the trellis of the porch; the
hardy geraniums made a stand for it yet, but their petals dropped off at
every puff of wind, and powdered the gravel with a scarlet ring round
their six big red pots that flanked the walk from the gate to the cottage
door; the red roses held out like a forlorn hope, defying the approach of
the conqueror, and staying to say a last good-by to sweet Mother Summer,
ere she passed away.
It was too chilly to sit out of doors late of afternoons now, and night
fell quickly. M. de la Bourbonais had collapsed into his brown den; but
the window stood open, and let the faint incense of the garden steal in
to him, as he bent over his desk with his shaded lamp beside him.
Franceline had found it cold, and had slipt away, without saying why,
to her own room upstairs. She was sitting on the floor with her hands
in her lap, and her head pressed against the latticed window, watching
the scarlet geraniums as they shivered in the evening breeze and dropped
into their moist autumn tomb. A large crystal moon was rising above the
woods beyond the river, and a few stars were coming out. She counted
them, and listened to the wood-pigeon cooing in the park, and to the
solitary note of an owl that answered from some distant grove. But the
voices of wood and field were not to her now what they once had been.
There was something in her that responded to them still, but not in the
old way; she had drifted somewhere beyond their reach; she was hearkening
for other voices, since one had touched her with a power these had never
possessed, and whose echoing sweetness had converted the sounds that had
till then been her only music into a blank and aching silence. Other
pulses had been stirred, other chords struck within her, so strong and
deep, and unlike the old childish ones, that these had become to her what
the memory of the joys of childhood are to the full-grown man--a sweet
shadow that lingers when the substance has fled; part of a life that has
been lived, that can never be quickened again, but is enshrined in memory.
She was very pale, almost like a shadow herself, as she sat there in the
silver gloom. Mothers who met her in her walks about the neighborhood
looked wistfully after the gentle young face, and said with a sigh:
“What a pity! And so young too!” Yet Franceline was not ill; not even
ailing; she never complained even of fatigue, and when her father
tapped the pale cheek and asked how his _Clair-de-lune_ was, she would
answer brightly that she had never been better in her life, and as she
had no cough, he believed her. A cough was Raymond’s single diagnosis of
disease and death; he had a vague but deep-seated belief that nobody,
no young person certainly, ever died a natural death without this fatal
premonitory symptom. And yet he could not help following Franceline with
an anxious eye as he saw her walking listlessly about the garden, or
sitting with a book in her hand that she let drop every now and then to
look dreamily out of the window, and only resumed with an evident effort.
Sometimes she would go and lean her arms on the rail at the end of the
garden, and stand there for an hour together gazing at the familiar
landscape as if she were discovering some new feature in it, or straining
her eyes to see some distant object. He could not lay his finger on any
particular symptom that justified anxiety, and still he was anxious; a
change of some sort had come over the child; she grew more and more like
her mother, and it was not until Armengarde was several years older than
Franceline that the disease which had been germinating in her system from
childhood developed itself and proved fatal.
M. de la Bourbonais never alluded to Franceline’s refusal of Sir Ponsonby
Anwyll, but he had not forgotten it. In his dreamy mind he cogitated on
the possibility of the offer being renewed, and her accepting it. As to
Clide de Winton, he had quite ceased to think of him, and never for an
instant coupled him in his thoughts with Franceline. It did not strike
him as significant that Sir Simon had avoided mentioning the young man
since his return. After the conversation that Clide had once been the
subject of between them, this reticence was natural enough. The failure
of his wild, affectionate scheme placed him in a somewhat ridiculous
position towards Raymond, and it was no wonder that he shrank from
alluding to it.
Sir Ponsonby had left Rydal immediately after the eventful ride we know
of. He could not remain in Franceline’s neighborhood without seeing her,
and he had sense enough to feel that he would injure rather than serve
his cause by forcing his society on her after what had passed. This
is as good as admitting that he did not look upon his cause as lost.
What man in love for the first time would give up after one refusal, if
his love was worth the name? Ponsonby was not one of the faint-hearted
tribe. He combined real modesty as to his own worth and pretensions
with unbounded faith in the power of his love and its ultimate success.
The infallibility of hope and perseverance was an essential part of his
lover’s creed. He did not apply the tenet with any special sense of its
fitness to Franceline in particular. He was no analyzer of character;
he did not discriminate nicely between the wants and attributes of one
woman and another; he blended them all in a theoretical worship, and
included all womankind in his notions as to how they were individually
to be wooed and won. He would let them have their own way, allow them
unlimited pin-money, cover them with trinkets, and gratify all their
little whims. If a girl were ever so beautiful and ever so good, no man
could do more for her than this; and any man who was able and willing to
do it, ought to be able to win her. Ponsonby took heart, and trusted to
his uniform good luck not to miss the prize he had set his heart on. He
would rejoin his regiment for the present, and see what a month’s absence
would do for him. He had one certain ground of hope: Franceline did not
dislike him, and, as far as he could learn or guess, she cared for no one
else. Sir Simon was his ally, and would keep a sharp lookout for him, and
keep the little spark alive--if spark there were--by singing his praises
judiciously in the ear of the cruel fair one.
She, meanwhile, went on in her usual quiet routine, tending the sick,
teaching some little children, and working with her father, who grew
daily more enamored of her tender and intelligent co-operation. Lady
Anwyll called soon after Ponsonby’s departure, and was just as kind and
unconstrained as if nothing had happened. She did not press Franceline to
go and stay at Rydal, but hoped she would ride over there occasionally
with Sir Simon to lunch. Her duties as secretary to Raymond made the
sacrifice of a whole afternoon repugnant to her; but she did go once,
just to show the old lady that she retained the same kind feeling
towards her as before anything had occurred to make a break in their
intimacy. It was delightful when she came home to find that her father
had been utterly at sea without her, mooning about in a helpless way
amongst the notes and papers that under her management had passed from
confusion and chaos into order and sequence. While everything was in
confusion he could find his way through the maze, but he had no key to
this new order of things. Franceline declared she must never leave
him so long again; he had put everything topsy-turvy, he was not to be
trusted. The discovery of his dependence on her in a sphere where she
had till lately been as useless to him as Angélique or Miss Merrywig
was a source of infinite enjoyment to her, and she threw herself into
her daily task with an energy that lightened the labor immensely to her
father, without, as far as Franceline could say, fatiguing herself. But
fatigue for being unconscious is sometimes none the less real. It may be
that this sustained application was straining a system already severely
tried by mental pressure. She was one day writing away as usual, while
Raymond, with a bookful of notes in his hand, stood on the hearth-rug
dictating. Suddenly she was seized with a fit of coughing, and, putting
her handkerchief quickly to her mouth, she drew it away stained with
crimson. She stifled a cry of terror that rose to her lips, and hurried
out of the room. Her father had seen nothing, but her abrupt departure
startled him; he hastened after her, and found her in the kitchen holding
the handkerchief up to Angélique, who was looking at the fatal stain with
a face rather stupefied than terrified.
“My God, have pity upon me! My child! My child!” he cried, clasping
his hands and abandoning himself to his distress with the impassioned
demonstrativeness of a Frenchman.
Woman, it is said truly, is more courageous at bearing physical pain
than man; it is true also that she has more self-command in controlling
the expression of mental pain. Her instinct is surer too in guiding
her how to save others from suffering; let her be ever so untutored,
she will prove herself shrewder than the cleverest man on occasions
like the present. Angélique’s womanly instinct told her at once that it
was essential not to frighten Franceline: that the nervous shock would
infallibly aggravate the evil, wherever the cause lay, and that the best
thing to do now was to soothe and allay her fears.
“Bless me! what is there to make a row about?” she cried with an angry
chuckle, crushing the handkerchief in her fingers and darting a look on
her master which, if eyes could knock down, must have laid him prostrate
on the spot; “the child has an indigestion and has thrown up a mouthful
of bread from her stomach. Hein!”
“How do you know it is from the stomach and not from the lungs?” he
asked, already reassured by her confidence, and still more by her
incivility.
“How do I know? Am I a fool? Would it be that color if it was from the
lungs? I say it is from the stomach, and it is a good business. But we
must not have too much of it. It would weaken the child; we must stop it.”
“I will run for the doctor at once!” exclaimed M. de la Bourbonais, still
trembling and excited. “Or stay!--no!--I will fly to the Court and they
will despatch a man on horseback!” He was hurrying away when Angélique
literally shouted at him:
“Wilt thou be quiet with thy doctor and thy man on horseback! I tell thee
it is from the stomach; I know what I am about. I want neither man nor
horse. It is from the stomach! Dost thou take me for a fool at this time
of my life?”
Raymond stood still like a chidden child while the old servant poured
this volley at him. Franceline stared at her aghast. In her angry
excitement the grenadier had broken through not only all barriers of
rank, but all the common rules of civility--she who was such a strict
observer of both that they seemed a very part of herself. This ought to
have opened their eyes, if nothing else did; but Franceline was only
bewildered, Raymond was cowed and perplexed.
“If thou art indeed quite sure,” he said, falling into the familiar “thee
and thou” by which she addressed him, and which on her deferential lips
sounded so outrageous and unnatural--“if thou art indeed certain I will
be satisfied; but, my good Angélique, would it not be a wise precaution
to have a medical man?--only just, as thou sayest well, to prevent its
going too far.”
“Well, well, if Monsieur le Comte wishes, let it be; let the doctor come;
for me, I care not for him; they are an ignorant lot, pulling long faces
to make long bills; but if it pleases Monsieur le Comte, let him have one
to see the child.” She nodded her flaps at him, as if to say, “Be off
then at once and leave us in peace!”
He was leaving the room, when, turning round suddenly, he came close
up to Franceline. “Dost thou feel a pain, my child?” he said, peering
anxiously into her face.
“No, father, not the least pain. I am sure Angélique is right; I feel
nothing here,” putting her hand to her chest.
“God is good! God is good!” muttered the father half audibly, and,
stroking her cheek gently, he went.
“Let not Monsieur le Comte go rushing off himself; let him send one of
those thirty-six lackeys at the Court!” cried Angélique, calling after
him through the kitchen window.
In her heart and soul Angélique was terrified. She had thrown out quite
at random, with the instinct of desperation, that confident assurance as
to the color of the stain. Her first impulse was to save Franceline from
the shock, but it had fallen full upon herself. This accident sounded
like the first stroke of the death-knell. No one would have supposed it
to look at her. She set her arms akimbo and laughed till she shook at her
own impudence to M. le Comte, and how meekly M. le Comte had borne it,
and how scared his face was, and what a joke the business was altogether.
To see him stand there wringing his hands, and making such a wailing
about nothing! But when Franceline was going to answer and reproach her
old _bonne_ with this inopportune mirth, she laid her hand on the young
girl’s mouth and bade her peremptorily be silent.
“If you go talking and scolding, child, there is no knowing what mischief
you may do. Come and lie down, and keep perfectly quiet.”
Franceline obeyed willingly enough. She was weak and tired, and glad to
be alone awhile.
Angélique placed a cold, wet cloth on her chest, and made her some cold
lemonade to drink. It was making a fuss about nothing, to be sure; but
it would please M. le Comte. He was never happier than when people were
making a fuss over his _Clair-de-lune_.
It was not long before the count returned, accompanied by Sir Simon.
Angélique saw at a glance that the baronet understood how things were. He
talked very big about his confidence that Angélique was right; that it
was an accident of no serious import whatever; but he exchanged a furtive
glance with the old woman that sufficiently belied all this confident
talk. He was for going up to see Franceline with M. de la Bourbonais,
but Angélique would not allow this. M. le Comte might go, if he liked,
provided he did not make her speak; but nobody else must go; the room
was too small, and it would excite the child to see people about her. So
Raymond went up alone. As soon as his back was turned, Angélique threw up
her hands with a gesture too significant for any words. Sir Simon closed
the door gently.
“I am not duped any more than you,” he said. “It is sure to be very
serious, even if it is not fatal. Tell me what you really think.”
“I saw her mother go through it all. It began like this. Only Madame
la Comtesse had a cough; the petite has never had one. That is the
only thing that gives me a bit of hope; the petite has never coughed.
O Monsieur Simon! it is terrible. It will kill us all three; I know it
will.”
“Tut, tut! don’t give up in this way, Angélique,” said the baronet
kindly, and turning aside; “that will mend nothing; it is the very worst
thing you could do. I agree with you that it is very serious; not so
much the accident itself, perhaps--we know nothing about that yet--but
on account of the hereditary taint in the constitution. However, there
has been no cough undermining it so far, and with care--I promise you she
shall have the best--there is every reason to hope the child will weather
it. At her age one weathers everything,” he added, cheerfully. “Come
now, don’t despond; a great deal depends on your keeping a cheerful
countenance.”
“I know it, monsieur, and I will do my best. But I hear steps! Could it
be the doctor already? For goodness’ sake run out and meet him, and tell
him, as he hopes to save us all, not to let Monsieur le Comte know there
is any danger! It is all up with us if he does. Monsieur le Comte could
no more hide it than a baby could hide a pin in its clothes.”
She opened the door and almost pushed Sir Simon out, in her terror lest
the doctor should walk in without being warned.
Sir Simon met him at the back of the cottage. A few words were exchanged,
and they came in together. Raymond met them on the stairs. The medical
man preferred seeing his patient alone; the nurse might be present, but
he could have no one else. In a very few minutes he came down, and a
glance at his face set the father’s heart almost completely at rest.
“Dear me, Sir Simon, you would never do for a sick nurse. You prepared me
for a very dangerous case by your message; it is a mere trifle; hardly
worth the hard ride I’ve had to perform in twenty minutes.”
“Then there is nothing amiss with the lungs?”
“Would you like to sound them yourself, count? Pray do! It will be
more satisfactory to you.” And he handed his stethoscope to M. de la
Bourbonais--not mockingly, but quite gravely and kindly.
That provincial doctor missed his vocation. He ought to have been a
diplomatist.
Instead of the proffered stethoscope, M. de la Bourbonais grasped his
hand. His heart was too full for speech. The reaction of security
after the brief interval of agony and suspense unnerved him. He sat
down without speaking, and wiped the great drops from his forehead. The
medical man addressed himself to Sir Simon and Angélique. There was
nothing whatever to be alarmed at; but there was occasion for care and
certain preventive measures. The young lady must have perfect rest and
quiet; there must be no talking for some time; no excitement of any sort.
He gave sundry directions about diet, etc., and wrote a prescription
which was to be sent to the chemist at once. M. de la Bourbonais
accompanied him to the door with a lightened heart, and bade him _au
revoir_ with a warm pressure of the hand.
“Now, let me hear the truth,” said Sir Simon, as soon as they entered the
park.
“You have heard the truth--though only in a negative form. If you
noticed, we did not commit ourselves to any opinion of the case; we only
prescribed for it. This was the only way in which we could honestly
follow your instructions,” observed the doctor, who always used the royal
“we” of authorship when speaking professionally.
“You showed great tact and prudence; but there is no need for either now.
Tell me exactly what you think.”
“It will be more to the purpose to tell you what we know,” rejoined the
medical man. “There is a blood-vessel broken; not a large one, happily,
and if the hemorrhage does not increase and continue, it may prove of no
really serious consequence. But then we must remember the question of
inheritance. That is what makes a symptom in itself trifling assume a
grave--we refrain from saying fatal--character.”
“You are convinced that this is but the beginning of the end--am I to
understand that?” asked Sir Simon. He was used to the doctor’s pompous
way, and knew him to be both clever and conscientious, at least towards
his patients.
“It would be precipitating an opinion to say so much. We are on the
whole inclined to take a more sanguine view. We consider the hitherto
unimpaired health of the patient, and her extreme youth, fair grounds for
hope. But great care must be taken; all excitement must be avoided.”
“You may count on your orders being strictly carried out,” said Sir Simon.
They walked on a few yards without further speech. Sir Simon was busy
with anxious and affectionate thoughts.
“I should fancy a warm climate would be the best cure for a case of this
kind,” he observed, answering his own reflections, rather than speaking
to his companion.
“No doubt, no doubt,” assented Dr. Blink, “if the patient was in a
position to authorize her medical attendant in ordering such a measure.”
“Monsieur de la Bourbonais is in that position,” replied Sir Simon,
quietly.
“Ah! I am glad to know it. I may act on the information one of these
days. The young lady could not bear the fatigue of a journey to the south
just now; the general health is a good deal below par; the nervous system
wants toning; it is unstrung.”
Sir Simon made no comment--not at least in words--but it set his mind
on painful conjecture. Perhaps the electric chain passed from him to
his companion, for the latter said irrelevantly but with a significant
expression, as he turned his glance full upon Sir Simon:
“We medical men are trusted with many secrets--secrets of the heart as
well as of the body. We ask you frankly, as a friend of our patient, is
there any moral cause at work--any disappointed affection that may have
preyed on the mind and fostered the inherited germs of disease?”
“I cannot answer that question,” replied the baronet after a moment’s
hesitation.
“You cannot, or you will not? Excuse my pertinacity; it is professional
and necessary.”
Sir Simon hesitated again before he answered.
“I cannot even give a decided answer to that. I had some time ago feared
there existed something of the sort, but of late those apprehensions had
entirely disappeared. If you had put the question to me yesterday, I
should have said emphatically there is nothing to fear on that score; the
child is perfectly happy and quite heart-whole.”
“And to-day you are not prepared to say as much,” persisted Dr. Blink.
“Something has occurred to modify this change of opinion?”
“Nothing, except the accident that you know of and your question now.
These suggest to me that I may have been right in the first instance.”
“Is it in your power or within the power of circumstances to set the
wrong right--to remove the cause of anxiety--assuming that it actually
exists?”
“No, it is not; nothing can remove it.”
“And she is aware of this?”
“I fear not.”
“Say rather that you hope not. In such cases hope is the best physician;
let nothing be done, as far as you can prevent it, to destroy this hope
in the patient’s mind; I would even venture to urge that you should do
anything in your power to feed and stimulate it.”
“That is impossible; quite impossible,” said Sir Simon emphatically. The
doctor’s words fell on him like a sting, and this very feeling increased
to conviction what had, at the beginning of the conversation, been only a
vague misgiving.
* * * * *
Franceline rallied quickly, and with her returning strength Sir Simon’s
fears were allayed. He had not been able to follow the doctor’s advice
as to keeping alive any soothing delusions that might exist in her mind,
but he succeeded, by dint of continually dinning it into his ears that
there was no danger, in convincing her father that there was not; and the
cheerfulness and security that radiated from him acted beneficially on
her, and proved of great help to the medical treatment. And was Dr. Blink
right in his surmise that a moral cause had been at work and contributed
to the bursting of the blood-vessel? If Franceline had been asked she
would have denied it; if any one had said to her that the accident had
been brought on by mental suffering, or insinuated that she was still
at heart pining for a lost love, she would have answered with proud
sincerity: “It is false; I am not pining. I have ceased to think of Clide
de Winton; I have ceased to love him.”
But which of us can answer truly for our own hearts? We do not want to
idealize Franceline. We wish to describe her as she was, the good with
the evil; the struggle and the victory as they alternated in her life;
her heart fluctuating, but never consciously disloyal. There must be
flaws in every picture taken from life. Perfection is not to be found in
nature, except when seen through a poet’s eyes. Perhaps it was true that
Franceline had ceased to love Clide. When our will is firmly set upon
self-conquest we are apt to fancy it achieved. But conquest does not of
necessity bring joy, or even peace. Nothing is so terrible as a victory,
except a defeat, was a great captain’s cry on surveying the bloody field
of yesterday’s battle. The frantic effort, the bleeding trophies may
inflict a death-wound on the conqueror as fatal, in one sense, as defeat.
We see the “good fight” every day leading to such issues. Brave souls
fight and carry the day, and then go to reap their laurels where “beyond
these voices there is peace.” Franceline had gained a victory, but there
was no rejoicing in the triumph. Her heart plained still of its wounds;
if she did not hear it, it was because she would not; it still bemoaned
its hard fate, its broken cup of happiness.
She rose up from this illness, however, happier than she had been for
months. It was difficult to believe that the period which had worked such
changes to her inward life counted only a few months; it seemed like
years, like a lifetime, since she had first met Clide de Winton. She
resumed her calmly busy little life as before the break had come that
suspended its active routine. By Dr. Blink’s desire the teaching class
was suppressed, and the necessity of guarding against cold prevented her
doing much amongst the sick; but this extra leisure in one way enabled
her to increase her work in another; she devoted it to writing with her
father; this never tired her, she affirmed--it only interested and amused
her.
The advisability of a trip to some southern spot in France or Italy had
been suggested by Dr. Blink; but the proposal was rejected by his patient
in such a strenuous and excited manner that he forebore to press it.
He noticed also an expression of sudden pain on M. de la Bourbonais’
countenance, accompanied by an involuntary deep-drawn sigh, that led him
to believe there must be pecuniary impediments in the way of the scheme,
notwithstanding Sir Simon’s assurance to the contrary. The _émigré_
was universally looked upon as a poor man. Who else would live as he
did? Still Sir Simon must have known what he was saying. However, as it
happened, the cold weather, which was now setting in pretty sharp, was
by no means favorable to travelling, so the doctor consented willingly
enough to abide by the patient’s circumstances and wishes. A long journey
in winter is always a high price for an invalid to pay for the benefit of
a warm climate.
In the first days of December, Sir Simon took flight from Dullerton to
Nice. Lady Rebecca was spending the winter at Cannes, and as Mr. Simpson
reported that “her ladyship’s health had declined visibly within the
last month,” it was natural that her dutiful step-son should desire to
be within call in case of any painful eventuality. If the climate of the
sunny Mediterranean town happened to be a very congenial winter residence
to him, so much the better. It is only fair that a man should have some
compensation for doing his duty.
The day before he started Sir Simon came down to The Lilies.
“Raymond,” he said, “you have sustained a loss lately; you must be in
want of money; now is the time to prove yourself a Christian, and let
others do unto you as you would do unto them. You offered me money once
when I did not want it; I offer it to you now that you do.” And he
pressed a bundle of notes into the count’s hands.
But Raymond crushed them back into his. “Mon cher Simon! I do not thank
you. That would be ungrateful; it would look as if I were surprised,
whereas I have long since come to take brotherly kindness as a matter of
course from you. But in truth I do not want this money; I give you my
word I don’t!”
“If you pledge your word, I must believe you, I suppose,” returned the
baronet; “but promise me one thing--if you should want it, you will let
me know?”
“I promise you I will.”
Sir Simon with a sigh, which Raymond took for reluctance, but which was
really one of relief, replaced the notes in his waistcoat pocket. “I had
better leave you a blank check all the same,” he said; “you might happen
to want it, and not be able to get a letter to me at once. There is no
knowing where the vagabond spirit may lead me, once I am on the move.
Give me a pen.” And he seated himself at the desk.
Raymond protested; but it was no use, Sir Simon would have his own way;
he wrote the blank check and saw it locked up in the count’s private
drawer. M. de la Bourbonais argued from this reckless committal of his
signature that the baronet’s finances were in a flourishing condition,
and was greatly rejoiced. Alas! if the truth were known, they had never
been in a sorrier plight. He had offered the bank-notes in all sincerity,
but if Raymond had accepted it, Sir Simon would have been at his wit’s
end to find the ready money for his journey. But he kept this dark, and
rather led his friend to suppose him flush of money; it was the only
chance of getting him to accept his generosity.
“Mind you keep me constantly informed how Franceline gets on,” were his
parting words; and M. de la Bourbonais promised.
She got on in pretty much the same way for some time. Languid and pale,
but not suffering; and she had no cough, and no return of the symptoms
that had alarmed them all so much. Angélique watched her as a cat watches
a mouse, but even her practised eye could detect no definite cause for
anxiety.
One morning, about a fortnight after Sir Simon’s departure, Franceline
was alone in the little sitting-room--her father had gone to do some
shopping for her in the town, as it was too cold for her to venture
out--when Sir Ponsonby Anwyll called. The moment she saw him she flushed
up, partly with surprise, partly with pleasure. A casual observer would
have concluded this to be a good sign for the visitor; a male friend
would have unhesitatingly pronounced him a lucky dog. Ponsonby himself
felt slightly elated.
“I heard you were ill,” he said, “and as I am at home on leave for a
few days, I could not resist coming to inquire for you. You are not
displeased with me for coming?”
“No, indeed; it is very kind of you. I am glad to see you,” Franceline
replied with bright, grateful eyes.
Hope bounded up high in Ponsonby.
“They told me you had been very ill. I hope it is not true. You don’t
look it,” he said anxiously.
“I have been frightening them a little more than it was worth; but I am
quite well now. How is Lady Anwyll?”
“Thank you, she’s just as usual; in very good health and a tremendous
bustle. You know I always put the house topsy-turvy when I come down. Not
that I mean to do it; it seems to come of itself as a natural consequence
of my being there,” he explained, laughing. “Is M. de la Bourbonais quite
well?”
“Quite well. He will be in presently; he is only gone to make a few
purchases for me.”
“How anxious he must have been while you were ill!”
“Dear papa! yes he was.”
“Do you ride much now?”
“Not at all. I am forbidden to take any violent exercise for the present.”
All obvious subjects being now exhausted, there ensued a pause. Ponsonby
was the first to break it.
“Have you forgiven me, Franceline?” he said, looking at her tenderly, and
with a sort of sheepish timidity.
“Indeed I have; forgiven and forgotten,” she replied; and then blushing
very red, and correcting herself quickly: “I mean there was nothing to
forgive.”
“That’s not the sort of forgiveness I want,” said Ponsonby, growing
courageous in proportion as she grew embarrassed. “Franceline, why can
you not like me a little? I love you so much; no one will ever love you
better, or as well!”
She shook her head, but said nothing, only rose and went to the window.
He followed her.
“You are angry with me again!” he exclaimed, and was going to break out
in entreaties to be forgiven; when stooping forward he caught sight of
her face. It was streaming with tears!
“There, the very mention of it sets you crying! Why do you hate me so?”
“I do not hate you. I never hated you! I wish with all my heart I could
love you! But I cannot, I cannot! And you would not have me marry you if
I did not love you? It would be false and selfish to accept your love,
with all it would bring me, and give so little in return?” She turned her
dark eyes on him, still full of tears, but unabashed and innocent, as if
he had been a brother asking her to do something unreasonable.
“So little!” he cried, and seizing her hand he pressed it to his lips;
“if you knew how thankful I would be for that little! What am I but an
awkward lout at best! But I will make you happy, Franceline; I swear to
you I will! And your father too. I will be as good as a son to him.”
She made no answer but the same negative movement of her head. She looked
out over the winter fields with a dreamy expression, as if she only half
heard him, while her hand lay passively in his.
“Say you will be my wife! Accept me, Franceline!” pleaded the young man,
and he passed his arm around her.
The action roused her; she snatched away her hand and started from
him. It was not aversion or antipathy, it was terror that dictated the
movement. Something within her cried out and forbade her to listen. She
could no more control the sudden recoil than she could control the tears
that gushed out afresh, this time with loud sobs that shook her from head
to foot.
“Good heavens! what have I done?” exclaimed Ponsonby, helpless and
dismayed. “Shall I go away? shall I leave you?”
“Oh! it is nothing. It is over now,” said Franceline, her agitation
quieted instantaneously by the sight of his. She dashed the tears from
her cheeks impatiently; she was vexed with herself for giving way so
before him. “Sit down; you are trembling all over,” said the young man;
and he gently forced her into a chair. “I am sorry I said anything; I
will never mention the subject again without your permission. Shall I go
away?”
“It would be very ungracious to say ‘yes,’” she replied, trying to smile
through the tears that hung like raindrops on her long lashes; “but you
see how weak and foolish I am.”
“My poor darling! I will go and leave you. I have been too much for you.
Only tell me, may I come soon again--just to ask how you are?”
She hesitated. To say yes would be tacitly to accept him; yet it was
odious to turn him off like this without a word of kindly explanation to
soften the pang. Ponsonby could not read these thoughts, so he construed
her hesitation according to the immemorial logic of lovers.
“Well, never mind answering now,” he said; “I won’t bother you any more
to-day. You will present my respects to the count, and say how sorry I
was not to see him.”
He held out his hand for good-by.
“You will meet him on the road, I dare say,” said Franceline, extending
hers. “You will not tell him how I have misbehaved to you?”
The shy smile that accompanied the request emboldened Ponsonby to raise
the soft, white hand to his lips. Then turning away he overturned a
little wicker flower-stand, happily with no injury to the sturdy green
plant, but with considerable damage to the dignity of his exit.
Perhaps you will say that Mlle. de la Bourbonais behaved like a flirt in
parting with a discarded lover in this fashion. It is easy for you to say
so. It is not so easy for a woman with a heart to inflict unmitigated
pain on a man who loves her, and whose love she at least requites with
gratitude, esteem, and sisterly regard.
Sir Ponsonby met the count on the road; he made sure of the encounter by
walking his horse up and down the green lane which commanded the road
from Dullerton to The Lilies. What passed between them remained the
secret of themselves and the winter thrush that perched on the brown
hedge close by and sang out lustily to the trees and fields while they
conversed.
M. de la Bourbonais made no comment on his daughter’s tear-stained cheeks
when he came home; but taking her face between his hands, as he was fond
of doing, he gave one wistful look, kissed it, and let it go.
“How long you have been away, petit père! Shall we go to our writing
now?” she inquired cheerfully.
“Art thou not tired, my child?”
“Tired! What have I done to tire me?”
She sat down at his desk, and nothing was said of Sir Ponsonby Anwyll’s
visit.
* * * * *
The excitement of that day’s interview told, nevertheless, on Franceline.
It left her nervous, and weaker than she had been since her recovery.
These symptoms escaped her father’s notice, and they would have escaped
Angélique’s, owing to Franceline’s strenuous efforts to conceal them, if
a slight cough had not come to put her on the _qui vive_ more than ever.
It was very slight indeed, only attacking her in the morning when she
awoke, and quite ceasing by the time she was dressed and down-stairs.
Franceline’s room was at one end of the cottage; Angélique slept next to
her; and at the other end, with the stairs intervening, was the count’s
room. He was thus out of ear-shot of the sound, which, however rare and
seemingly unimportant, would have filled him with alarm. Franceline
treated it as a trifle not worth mentioning; but when her old _bonne_
insisted on taking her discreetly to Dr. Blink and having his opinion
about it, she gave in to humor her. The doctor once more applied his
stethoscope, and then, smiling that grim, satisfied smile of his that was
so reassuring to patients till they had seen it practised on others and
found out it was a fallacy, remarked:
“We are glad to be able to assure you again that there is nothing to
be frightened at; no mischief that cannot be forestalled by care, and
docility to our instructions,” he added emphatically. “We must order you
some tonics, and you must take them regularly. How is the appetite?”
turning to Angélique, who stood by devouring the oracle’s words and
watching every line of his features with a shrewd, almost vicious
expression of mistrust on her brown face.
“Ah! the appetite. She will not be eating many; she will be wanting
dainty plates which I cannot make,” explained the Frenchwoman, sticking
pertinaciously to the future tense, as usual when she spoke English.
“Invalids are liable to those caprices of the palate,” remarked Dr. Blink
blandly; “but Miss Franceline will be brave and overcome them. Dainty
dishes are not always the most nourishing, and nourishment is necessary
for her; it is essential.”
“That is what I will be telling mamselle,” assented Angélique; “but she
will not be believing me. I will be telling her every day the strength is
in the bouillon; but she will be making a grimace and saying ‘Pshaw!’”
The last word was uttered with a grimace so expressive that Franceline
burst out laughing, and the pompous little doctor joined in it in spite
of his dignity. She promised to do her best to obey him and overcome
her dislike to the bouillon, Angélique’s native panacea, and to other
substantial food.
But she found it very hard to keep the promise. It required something
savory to tempt her weak appetite. Angélique saw she was doing her
best, and never pressed the poor child needlessly; but she would groan
over the plate as she removed it, sometimes untouched. “I used to think
myself a ‘blue ribbon’ until now,” she said once to Franceline, with an
impatient sigh; “but I am at the end of my talent; I can do nothing to
please mamselle.” And then she would long for Sir Simon to come home.
It happened unluckily that the professed artist who presided over the
kitchen at the Court was taking a holiday during his master’s absence.
Angélique would have scorned to invoke the skill of the subaltern who
replaced him, but she had a profound admiration for the _chef_ himself,
and, though an Englishman, she bowed unreservedly to his superior
talents. The belief was current that Sir Simon would spend the Christmas
at Dullerton; he always did when not at too great a distance at that
time. It was the right thing for an English gentleman to do, and his
bitterest foe would not accuse the baronet of failing to act up to that
standard.
This year, however, it was not possible. The weather was glorious at Nice
and it was anything but that at Dullerton, and the long journey in the
cold was not attractive. He wrote home desiring the usual festivities
to be arranged according to the old custom of the place; coals and
clothing were to be distributed _ad libitum_; the fatted calf was to be
killed for the tenantry, and everybody was enjoined to eat, drink, and
be merry in spite of the host’s absence. They conscientiously followed
these hospitable injunctions, but it was a grievous disappointment that
Sir Simon was not in their midst to stimulate the conviviality by his
kindly and genial presence. Pretty presents came to The Lilies, but they
did not bring strength to Franceline. She grew more transparent, more
fragile-looking, as the days went on. Angélique held private conferences
with Miss Merrywig, and that lady suggested that any of the large houses
in the neighborhood would be only too delighted to be of any use in
sending jellies flavored with good strong wine. There was nothing so
nourishing for an invalid; Miss Merrywig would speak to one where there
was a capital cook. But Angélique would not hear of it. No, no! Much as
she longed for the jelly she dared not get it in this way. M. le Comte
would never forgive her. “He will be so proud, M. le Comte! He will be a
Scotchman! He will not be confessing even to me that he wants nothing.
But Monsieur Simon will be coming; he will be coming soon, and then he
will be making little plates for mamselle every day.” Meantime she and
Franceline did their best to hide from Raymond this particular reason
for desiring their friend’s return. But he noticed that she ate next to
nothing, and that she often signed to Angélique to remove her plate on
which the food remained untasted. Once he could not forbear exclaiming:
“Ah! if we were in Paris I could get some _friandise_ to tempt thee!”
In the middle of January one morning a letter came from Sir Simon,
bearing the London postmark.
He had been obliged to come to England on pressing business of a
harassing nature.
“Is Sir Simon coming home, petit père?” inquired Franceline eagerly, as
her father opened the letter.
“Yes; but only for a day. He will be here after to-morrow, and fly away
to Nice the next day.”
“How tiresome of him! But it is better to see him for a day than not at
all. Does he say what hour he arrives? We will go and meet him.”
“It will be too late for thee to be out, my child. He comes by the late
afternoon train, just in time to dress for dinner and receive us all. He
has invited several friends in the neighborhood to dine.”
“What a funny idea! And he is only coming for the day?”
“Only for the day.”
Raymond’s eyebrows closed like a horseshoe over his meditative eyes
as he folded the baronet’s letter and laid it aside. There was more
in it than he communicated to Franceline. It was the old story; money
tight, bills falling due, and no means of meeting them. Lady Rebecca
had taken a fresh start, thanks to an Italian quack who had been up
from Naples and worked wonders with some diabolical elixir--diabolical
beyond a doubt, for nothing but the black-art could explain the sudden
and extraordinary rally; she was all but dead when the quack arrived--so
Mr. Simpson heard from one of her ladyship’s attendants. Simpson himself
was terribly put out by the news; it overturned all his immediate plans;
he saw no possibility of any longer avoiding extremities. Extremities
meant that the principal creditor, a Jew who had lent a sum of thirty
thousand pounds on Sir Simon’s life-interest in Dullerton, at the rate
of twenty per cent, was now determined to wait no longer for his arrears
of twenty per cent, but turn the baronet out of possession and sell his
life-interest in the estate. This sword of Damocles had been hanging over
his debtor’s head for the last ten years. It was to meet this usurious
interest periodically that Sir Simon was driven to such close quarters.
He had up to this time contrived to answer the demand--Heaven and Mr.
Simpson alone knew at what sacrifices. But now he had come to a point
beyond which even he declared he could not possibly carry his client. He
had tried to negotiate post-obit bills on Lady Rebecca’s fifty thousand
pounds, but the Jews were too sharp for that. Lady Rebecca was sole
master of her fifty thousand pounds, and might leave it to whom she
liked. She had made her will bequeathing it to her step-son, and _he_
was morally as certain of ultimately possessing the money as if it were
entailed; but moral security is no security at all to a money-lender.
The money was _not_ entailed; Lady Rebecca might take it into her head
to alter her will; she might leave it to a quack doctor, or to some
clever sycophant of an attendant. There is no saying what an old lady of
seventy-five may not do with fifty thousand pounds. Sir Simon pshawed
and pooh-poohed contemptuously when Simpson enumerated these arguments
against the negotiation of the much-needed P. O. bills; but it was no
use. Israel was inexorable. And now one particular member of the tribe
called Moses to witness that if he were not paid his “twenty per shent”
on the first of February, he would seize upon the life-interest of
Dullerton Court and make its present owner a bankrupt. He could sell
nothing, either in the house or on the estate; the plate and pictures and
furniture were entailed. If this were not the case, things need not have
come to this with Sir Simon. Two of those Raphaels in the great gallery
would have paid the Jew principal and interest together; but not a spoon
or a hearth-brush in the Court could be touched; everything belonged to
the heir. No mention has hitherto been made of that important person,
because he in no way concerns this story, except by the fact of his
existence. He was a distant kinsman of the present baronet, who had never
seen him. He was in diplomacy, and so lived always abroad. People are
said to dislike their heirs.
If Sir Simon disliked any human being, it was his. He did not dislike
Lady Rebecca; he was only out of patience with her; she certainly was
an aggravating old woman--living on to no purpose, that he could see,
except to frustrate and harass him. Yet he had kindly thoughts of her;
he had only cold aversion towards the man who was waiting for his own
death to come and rule in his stead. He had never spoken of him to M. de
la Bourbonais except to inform him that he existed, and that he stood
in his way on many occasions. In the letter of this morning he spoke of
him once more. The letter was a long one, and calmer than any previous
effusion of the kind that Raymond remembered. There was very little
vituperation of the duns, or even of the chief scoundrel who was about
to tear away the veil that had hitherto concealed the sores and flaws
in the popular landlord’s life. This was what he felt most deeply in
it all; the disgrace of being shown up as a sham--a man who had lived
like a prince while he had been in reality a beggar, in debt up to his
ears, and who was now about to be made a bankrupt. Raymond had never
before understood the real nature of his friend’s embarrassment; he
was shocked and distressed more than he could express. It was not the
moment to judge him; to remember the reckless extravagance, the criminal
want of prudence, of conscience, that had brought him to this pass. He
only thought of the friend of his youth, the kind, faithful, delightful
companion who had never failed in friendship, whatever his other sins
may have been. And now he was ruined, disgraced before the world, going
to be driven forth from his ancestral home branded as a life-long sham.
Raymond could have wept for pity. Then it occurred to him with a strange
pang that he was to dine with Sir Simon the next day; the head cook had
been telegraphed for to prepare the dinner; there was to be a jovial
gathering of friends to “cheer him up.” What a mystery it was, this
craving for being cheered up, as if the process were a substantial remedy
that in some way helped to pay debts, or postpone payment! The count was
too sad at heart to smile. He rose from the breakfast-table with a sigh,
and was leaving the room when Franceline linked her hands on his arm, and
said, looking up with an anxious face:
“It is a long letter, petit père; is there any bad news?”
“There is hardly any news at all,” he replied evasively. In truth there
was not.
“Then why do you look so sad?”
“Why dost thou look so pale?” was the reply. And he smiled tenderly and
sighed again as he kissed her forehead.
TO BE CONTINUED.
ÆSCHYLUS.
A sea-cliff carved into a bas-relief!
Art, rough from Nature’s hand; by brooding Nature
Wrought out in spasms to shapes of Titan stature;
Emblems of Fate, and Change, Revenge, and Grief,
And Death, and Life; in giant hieroglyph
Confronting still with thunder-blasted frieze
All stress of years, and winds, and wasting seas--
The stranger nears it in his western skiff,
And hides his eyes. Few, few shall dare, great Bard,
Thy watery portals! Entering, fewer yet
Shall pierce thy music’s meaning, deep and hard!
But these shall owe to thee an endless debt;
The Eleusinian caverns they shall tread
That wind beneath man’s heart; and wisdom learn with dread.
AUBREY DE VERE.
A PRECURSOR OF MARCO POLO.
The merchants and missionaries who were the first travellers and
ambassadors of Christian times little thought, absorbed as they were in
the object of their quest, how large a share of interest in the eyes
of posterity would centre in the quaint observations, descriptions,
and drawings which they were able incidentally to gather or make.
Marco Polo’s name, and even those of his father and uncle, Niccolo and
Matteo Polo, are well known, and are associated with all that barbaric
magnificence the memory of which had a great share in keeping alive
the perseverance of subsequent explorers. It was fitting that traders
in jewels should reach the more civilized and splendid Tartars, and
no doubt their store of rich presents, and their garments of ample
dimensions as well as fine texture, would prove a passport through
tribes so passionately acquisitive as the Tartars seem to have been.
Nomads are not always simple-minded or unambitious. The Franciscan whose
travels come just between the expedition of the elder Polo and the more
famous Marco--Friar William Rubruquis--did not have the good-luck to
see the wonders his successor described; but he mentions repeatedly
that his entertainers made reiterated and minute inquiries as to the
abundance of flocks and herds in the country he came from, and that they
wondered--rather contemptuously--at the presents of sweet wine, dried
fruits, and delicate cakes which were all he had to offer their great
princes.
Rubruquis was traveller, missionary, and ambassador, but in the two
pursuits denoted by the last-mentioned titles his success was but small.
As a traveller, however, he was hardy, persevering, and observant. Though
not bred a horseman, he often rode thirty leagues a day, and half the
time at full gallop, he says. His companions, monks like himself, could
not stand the fatigue, and both, at different intervals, parted company
from him. But Rubruquis was young and strong, though, as he himself says,
corpulent and heavy; and, above all, he was enterprising. He was not
more than five-and-twenty when he started on his quest of the Christian
monarch whom all the rulers of Europe firmly believed in, and whose name
has come down to us as Prester John.
Born in 1230, he devoted himself early to the church, and during the
Fourth Crusade went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. His real name was
Ruysbroek, but, according to the unpatriotic fashion of the times, he
Latinized it into Rubruquis. S. Louis, King of France, eager for the
Christian alliance which the supposed Prester John would be able to enter
into with him, had once already sent an embassy of monks to seek him; but
they had failed to perform a sixth part of the journey set down for them,
and had heard no tidings of a monarch answering to the description. The
king, nothing daunted, determined to send another embassy on a voyage
of discovery Vague news of a Christian Tartar chief, by name Sartach,
had come to him; probably the toleration extended by the Tartars to
Christians--a contrast to the behavior of most Saracenic chiefs--led to
this obstinate belief in a remote Christian empire of the East.
William de Rubruquis, Bartholomew of Cremona, and a companion named
Andrew, all Franciscan friars, were chosen for this new expedition.
On the 7th of May, 1253 (says his narrative, though it has since been
calculated that, as S. Louis was a captive at the time, the date 1255 is
more likely to be correct), the travellers, having crossed the Black Sea
from Constantinople, landed at Soldaia, near Cherson. The king, somewhat
unwisely as it proved, had told his envoy to represent himself as a
private individual travelling on his own account. But the Tartars were
acute and jealous of foreigners; they knew that travelling entailed too
much fatigue and danger to be undertaken simply for pleasure, and they
had small regard for any stranger, unless the representative of a prince.
They guessed his mission, and taxed him with it, till he was obliged to
acknowledge that he was the bearer of letters from the Christian King of
France to the mighty khan, Sartach. But though the people do not seem to
have taken him for a private person, they were puzzled by the poverty of
his dress and the scantiness of the presents he offered them. Even small
dignitaries expected to be royally propitiated. He explained his vow of
poverty to them, but this did not impress the Tartars as favorably as he
wished. Still, he met with nothing but civility and hospitality.
Rubruquis says that Soldaia was a great mart for furs, which the
Russians exchanged with the merchants of Constantinople for silks,
cotton, spices, etc. The third day after his departure he met a wandering
tribe, “among whom being entered,” he says, “methought I was come into a
new world.”
He goes on to describe their houses on wheels, no despicable or narrow
habitations, even according to modern ideas:
“Their houses, in which they sleep, they raise upon a round foundation of
wickers artificially wrought and compacted together, the roof consisting
of wickers also meeting above in one little roundel, out of which there
rises upwards a neck like a chimney, which they cover with white felt;
and often they lay mortar or white earth upon the felt with the powder
of bones, that it may shine and look white; sometimes, also, they cover
their houses with black felt. This cupola … they adorn with a variety
of pictures. Before the door they hang a felt curiously painted over;
for they spend all their colored felt in painting vines, trees, birds,
and beasts thereupon. These houses they make so large that they contain
thirty feet in breadth; for, measuring once the breadth between the
wheel-ruts, … I found it to be twenty feet over, and when the house was
upon the cart it stretched over the wheels on each side five feet at
least. I told two-and-twenty oxen in one draught, drawing an house upon a
cart, and eleven more on the other side. (Two rows, one in front of the
other, we suppose.) … A fellow stood in the door of the house, driving
the oxen.”
Sometimes a woman drove, or walked at the head of the leaders to guide
them. “One woman will guide twenty or thirty carts at once; for their
country is very flat, and they fasten the carts with camels or oxen one
behind another. A girl sits in the foremost cart, driving the oxen, and
all the rest of themselves follow at a like pace. When they come to a
place which is a bad passage, they loose them, and guide them one by
one.…”
The baggage was so arranged as to be taken through the smaller rivers
of Asia without being injured or wetted. It consisted of square chests
of wicker-work, with a hollow lid or cover of the same, “covered with
black felt, rubbed over with tallow or sheep’s milk to keep the rain from
soaking through, which they also adorn with painting or white feathers.”
These were placed on carts with very high wheels, and drawn by camels
instead of oxen. The encampment was like a large village, well defended
by palisades formed of the carts off which the houses had been taken,
and which were drawn up in two compact lines, one in front and one in
the rear of the dwellings, “as it were between two walls,” says our
traveller. A rich Tartar commonly had one hundred, or even two hundred,
such cart-houses. Each house had several small houses belonging to it,
placed behind it, serving as closets, store-rooms, and sleeping chambers,
and often as many as two hundred chests and their necessary carts. This
made immense numbers of camels and oxen for draught necessary; and,
besides, there were the animals for food and milk, and the horses for the
men. They had cow’s milk and mare’s milk, two species of food which they
used very differently, and even made of social and religious importance.
Only the men were allowed to milk the mares, while the women attended to
the cows; and any interchange of these offices would have been deemed,
in a man, unpardonable effeminacy, and in a woman indelicacy. At the door
of the houses stood two tutelary deities, monsters of both sexes. The
cow’s milk served for the food of women and children, while the mare’s
milk was made into a fermented liquor called cosmos. This was supposed
to make a heathen of the man who drank it; for the Nestorian Christians
found among them, “who keep their own laws very strictly, will not drink
thereof; they account themselves no Christians after they have once drunk
of it; and their priests reconcile them to the church as if they had
renounced the Christian faith.”
This cosmos was made thus: The milk was poured into a large skin bag,
and the bag beaten with a wooden club until the milk began to ferment
and turn sour. The bag was then shaken and cudgelled again until most of
it turned to butter; after which the liquid was supposed to be fit for
drinking. Rubruquis evidently liked it; says it was exhilarating to the
spirits, and even intoxicating to weak heads; pungent to the taste, “like
raspberry wine,” but left a flavor on the palate “like almond-milk.”
Cara-cosmos, a rarer quality of the same, and reserved for the chiefs
only, was produced by prolonging the beating of the bag until the
coagulated portions subsided to the bottom. These drinks were received as
tribute or taxes. Baatu, a chief with sixteen wives, received the produce
of three thousand mares daily, besides a quantity of common cosmos, a
bowl of which almost always stood on the threshold of every rich man’s
house. The Tartars often drank of it to excess, and their banquets were
relieved by music.
At these feasts, in which both sexes participated, the guests clapped
their hands and danced to the music, the men before their host, the
women before his principal wife. The host always drank first. The moment
he put his lips to the bowl of cosmos, his cup-bearer cried aloud
“Ha!” and the musicians struck up. This almost sounds like a mediæval
Twelfth-night banquet, when all the guests rose and shouted, “The king
drinks!” and then drained their goblets in imitation of the monarch of
the night. The Tartars respectfully waited till the lord of the feast
had finished his draught, when the cup-bearer again cried “Ha!” and the
music ceased. After a pause, the guests, male and female, drank round in
turns, each one to the sound of music, with a pause and silence before
the next person took up the cup. This fashion of drinking continued
unchanged for many centuries, and later travellers, amid the increased
pomp of the court of the Tartar emperors of China, found it still in
force--music, cries, pauses, and all. We have also seen, not many years
ago, on the occasion of the marriage of the late young emperor of China,
illustrations of the wedding procession, representing immensely wide
carts, drawn by eleven oxen abreast, laden with costly state furniture;
and if we take away the pomp and gilding, the picture is not unlike that
of the Tartar camp-carts seen by our traveller. Rubruquis hints that the
Tartars were not a temperate people; they drank much and not cleanly,
and the way of “inviting” a person to drink was to seize his ears and
pull them forcibly. The sweet wine, of which the monk had a small supply,
pleased them very well, but they thought him not lavish enough in his
hospitality; for once, on his offering the master of the house one flagon
of this wine, the man gravely drained it and asked for another, saying
that “a man does not go into a house with one foot.” In return, however,
they did not give him much to eat; but perhaps he suffered hunger rather
from his prejudice to the meat they ate than from their niggardliness
in giving. He at last learned to eat horse-flesh, but was disgusted at
his friends’ eating the bodies of animals that had died of disease. The
Tartars were honest enough, and, never even took things by force; but
they begged for everything that took their fancy as unblushingly as some
of Paul Du Chaillu’s negroes in Africa. It surprised them to be refused
anything--knives, gloves, purses, etc.--and, when gratified, never
thought it necessary to thank their guests.
After a while Rubruquis met the carts of Zagatai, one of the chieftains,
to whom he brought a letter from the Emperor of Constantinople. Here
the Tartars asked “what we had in our carts--whether it were gold, or
silver, or rich garments”; and both Zagatai and his interpreter were
haughtily discontented at finding that at least some garment of value
was not forthcoming. This is not wonderful, considering the wealth of
their own great khans, of whom a later one, Kooblai, so celebrated in
Marco Polo’s travels, gave his twelve lords, twelve times in the year,
robes of gold-colored silk, embroidered with gold and precious stones.
Zagatai, however, received the ambassador graciously. “He sat on his
bed,”[45] says Rubruquis, “holding a musical instrument in his hand,
and his wife sat by him, who, in my opinion, had cut and pared her nose
between the eyes, that she might seem to be more flat-nosed; for she had
left herself no nose at all in that place, having anointed the very scar
with black ointment, as she also did her eyebrows, which sight seemed to
me most ugly.… I besought him that he would accept this small gift at our
hands, excusing myself that I was a monk, and that it was against our
profession to possess gold, silver, or precious garments, and therefore
that I had not any such thing to give him, unless he would receive some
part of our victuals instead of a blessing.” The Tartars were always
eager to receive a blessing over and above any present. He was constantly
asked to make over them the sign of the cross; but it is to be feared
that they looked upon it as a charm, and of charms they couldn’t have
too many. From Zagatai, Rubruquis went to Sartach, who said he had no
power of treating with him, and sent him on to his father-in-law, Baatu,
the patriarch with sixteen wives and several hundred houses. Losing
his ox-wagons and baggage on the way--for the independent tribes did
not scruple to exact tribute from a traveller, even if he was a friend
of their neighbors--he never lost his courage and his determination
to sow the seeds of truth in Tartary. He did not know the language at
first, and only learnt it very imperfectly at the last. Here and there
a captive Christian, mostly Hungarians, or a Tartar who had learnt the
rudiments of Christianity during an invasion of his tribe into Europe,
acted as interpreter. All were uniformly kind to him. One of them,
who understood Latin and psalmody, was in great request at all the
funerals of his neighborhood; but the “Christianity” of the natives was
but a shred of Nestorianism worked into a web of paganism, so that, the
farther he advanced, the farther the great, powerful, united Christian
community headed by Prester John seemed to recede. The people took kindly
to Christian usages, and had some respect for the forms and ceremonies
which the monk and his companions endeavored to keep up; but when it
came to doctrine and morality, they grew impatient and unresponsive. One
of Rubruquis’ interpreters often refused to do his office. “And thus,”
says the traveller, “it caused me great chagrin when I wished to address
to them a few words of edification; for he would say to me, ‘You shall
not make me preach to-day; I understand nothing of all you tell me.’ …
And then he spoke the truth; for afterwards, as I began to understand a
little of their tongue, I perceived that when I told him one thing he
repeated another, just according to his fancy. Therefore, seeing it was
no use to talk or preach, I held my tongue.”
Hard riding was not the only thing that distressed the ambassador of
the King of France. His companions gave him meat that was less than
half-cooked, and sometimes positively raw. Then the cold began to be
severe, and still there were at least four months’ travel before him.
The Tartars were kind to him in their rough way, and gave him some of
their thick sheepskins and hide shoes. He had insisted on journeying most
of the time in his Franciscan sandals, and, full of ardor for his rule,
had constantly refused gifts of costly garments. This the Tartars never
quite understood, but they respected the principle which caused him to
make so many sacrifices for the sake and furtherance of his religion.
Wherever he passed, he and his companions endeared themselves to the
inhabitants by many little services (doubtless also by cures wrought
by simple remedies), and generally by their gentle, unselfish conduct
towards all men. Rubruquis observed everything minutely as he passed. The
manners and customs of the people interested him, and perhaps he did not
consider them quite such barbarians as we of later days are apt to do.
When we read the accounts of domestic life among the majority of people
in mediæval times, and see that refinement of manner was less thought of
than costliness of apparel and wealth of plate and cattle, the difference
between such manners and those of the Tartars is not appreciable. Few in
those days were learned, and learning it is that has always made the real
difference between a gentleman and a boor. The marauding chieftains of
feudal times were only romantic and titled highwaymen after all. So were
the wandering Tartars. The difference that has since sprung up between
the descendants of the marauding barons and those of the Tartar chiefs is
mainly one of race. The former are of an enterprising, improving race,
the latter of a stagnant one; and while the European nations that then
trembled before the invading hordes of Jengis-Khan have now developed
into intellectual superiority over every other race in the world, the
Tartar is still, socially and intellectually, on the same old level, and
his political advantages have vanished with his rude warlike superiority
before the diplomacy and the military organization of his former victims.
Rubruquis noticed that among the superstitions common in Tartary was a
belief that it was unlucky for a visitor to touch the threshold of a
Tartar’s door. Modern travellers assert the same of the Chinese. Whenever
our envoy paid a visit, he deferred to this belief by carefully stepping
across the threshold of the house or tent, without letting any part of
his person or dress come in contact with it. Their dress, on festive
occasions, was rich; for they traded with China, Persia, and other
southern and eastern countries for “stuffs of silk, cloths of gold, and
cotton cloths, which they wear in time of summer; but out of Russia,
Bulgaria, Hungaria, and out of Chersis (all which are northern regions
and full of woods), … the inhabitants bring them rich and costly skins
and furs of divers sorts, which I never saw in our countries, wherewithal
they are clad in winter.” The rough sheepskin coats had their place also
in their toilet, and a material made of two-thirds wool and one-third
horsehair furnished them with caps, saddle-cloths, and felt for covering
their wagons.
The women’s dress was distinguished from the men’s simply by its greater
length, and they often rode, like the men, astride their horses, their
faces protected by a white veil, crossing the nose just below the eyes
and descending to the breast. Immense size and flat noses were the great
desiderata among them. Marriage was a mere bargain, and daughters were
generally sold to the highest bidder. Though expert hunters, the Tartars
were scarcely what we should call sportsmen. They hunted on the _battue_
system, spreading themselves in a wide circle, and gradually contracting
this as they drove the game before them, until the unfortunate animals
being penned in in a small space, they were easily shot down by
wholesale. Hawking was also in vogue among the Tartars, and was reduced
as much to a science as in Europe. They strenuously punished great crimes
with death, as, for instance, murder, theft, adultery, and even minor
offences against chastity. This, however, was less the consequence of a
regard for virtue _per se_ than of a vivid perception of the rights of
property. No code but the Jewish and the Christian ever protected the
honor of women for its own sake. In mourning for the dead it is strange
that violent howling and lamentation, even on the part of those not
personally concerned, should be a form common to almost all nations, not
only of different religions, but of various and widely-separated races.
The Tartars, as well as the Celts, practised it. Rubruquis mentions that
they made various monuments over the graves of their dead, sometimes mere
mounds or barrows of earth, or towers of brick and even of stone--though
no stone was to be found near the spot--and sometimes large open spaces,
paved with stone, with four large stones placed upright at the corners,
always facing the four cardinal points.
It was during winter that the envoy arrived at the court or encampment of
Mandchu-Khan. He says that it was at the distance of twenty days’ journey
from Cataya, or Cathay (China), but it is difficult to say exactly where
that was. Here Rubruquis found a number of Nestorian priests peacefully
living under the khan’s protection, and among them one who had only
arrived a month before the Franciscan friar, and said he had come, in
consequence of a vision, to convert the khan and his people. He was an
Armenian from the Holy Land. Our missionary describes him thus in his
terse, direct way, which has this advantage over the long-winded and
minute descriptions of our day, that we seem to see the man before us:
“He was a monk, somewhat black and lean, clad with a rough hair-coat
to the knees, having over it a black cloak of bristles, furred with
spotted skins, girt with iron under his hair-cloth.” Mandchu-Khan was
tolerant and liberal, and rather well disposed than otherwise to the
Christian religion. His favorite wife, whom he had lately lost, had
been a Christian, and so was his first secretary, but both Nestorian
Christians. The khan, or his servants--who doubtless expected to be
propitiated with the usual gifts if they could only succeed in wearying
out the patience of the new-comers--made the envoy wait nine days for
an audience. The Tartars thought it strange that a king’s ambassador
should come to court bare-foot; but a boy, a Hungarian captive, again
gave the required and often-repeated explanation. Before entering the
large hall, whose entrance was closed by curtains of gayly-painted felt,
the monks were searched, to see if they carried any concealed arms; and
then the procession formed, the Christian missionaries entering the
khan’s presence singing the hymn _A Solis ortus cardine_. The khan,
like the lesser chieftains Rubruquis had already met, was seated on a
“bed” or divan, dressed “in a spotted skin or fur, bright and shining.”
The multitudinous bowings and prostrations in use at the Chinese court
were very likely exacted, though the envoy says in general terms that
“he had to bend the knee.” Such simplicity is, however, very far from
the ceremonious Oriental ideal of homage, and it was not then, as it
is now, esteemed an honor to receive Frankish envoys in the Frankish
manner. Mandchu first offered his guests a drink of fermented milk, of
which they partook sparingly, not to offend him; but the interpreter
soon made himself unfit for his office by his indulgence in his favorite
beverage. Rubruquis stated his mission with modest simplicity. In his
quality of ambassador he might have resented the delay in receiving
him; he might have complained of the familiarity and want of respect
with which he had been often treated, and of the advantage taken of
his gentleness and ignorance of the language to plunder him; but he
was more than a king’s messenger. He was intent upon preaching the
“good tidings” to the Tartars, and only used human means to compass a
divine end. He acknowledged that he had no rich presents nor temporal
goods to offer, but only spiritual benefits to impart. His practice
certainly did not belie his theory. The people never disbelieved him,
nor suspected him of being a political emissary. But still, he was
unsuccessful. He soon perceived that his interpreter was blundering, and
says: “I easily found he was drunk, and Mandchu-Khan himself was drunk
also, as I thought.” All he could obtain was leave to remain in the
country during the cold season. Inquiries met him on all sides as to the
wealth and state of Europe; but of religion, beyond the few forms that
pleased their eye, the people did not seem to think. They looked down
with lofty indifference on the faith of those various adventurers whom
their sovereign kindly sheltered, and ranked the Christian priests they
already knew in the same category with conjurers and quack doctors. The
Christianity of these Nestorians was even more imperfect than that of
the Abyssinians at the time of the late English invasion of the unlucky
King Theodore’s dominions. Rubruquis was horrified to find in these
priests mere superstitious mountebanks. They mingled Tartar rites with
corrupt ceremonies of the Catholic Church, and practised all manner of
deceptions, mixing rhubarb with holy water as a medicinal drink, and
carrying to the bedside of the sick lances and swords half-drawn from
their sheaths along with the crucifix. Upon these grounds they pretended
to the power of working miracles and curing the sick by spiritual means
alone. The Franciscan zealously tried to reform these abuses and to
convert the Nestorians before he undertook to preach to the Tartars; but
here again he was unsuccessful. The self-interest of these debased men
was in question, and truth was little to them in comparison with the
comfort and consideration they enjoyed as leeches.
A curious scene occurred while at this encampment of the khan. There
were many Mahometans in the country, and the sovereign, with impartial
tolerance, protected them and their commerce as he did the person and
property of other refugees. They, the Christians, and some representative
Tartars were all assembled one day, by order of Mandchu, to discuss in
public the merits of their respective faiths. But even on this occasion
no bitterness was evinced, and the meeting, though it turned out useless
in a spiritual sense, ended in a friendly banquet. Rubruquis did
his best to improve this opportunity of teaching the truth; but the
hour of successful evangelization had not yet struck, and much of the
indifference of the Tartars is to be attributed to the culpable practices
of the Nestorians, whose behavior was enough to discredit the religion
they pretended to profess. But if the missionary, notwithstanding all
his zeal, was unable to convert the heathens, he at least comforted and
strengthened many captive Christians. We have already mentioned a few of
these, and in Mandchu’s camp he met with another, a woman from Metz in
Lorraine, who had been taken prisoner in Hungary, and been carried back
into their own country by the invaders. She had at first suffered many
hardships, but ended by marrying a young Russian, a captive like herself,
who was skilful in the art of building wooden houses. The Tartars prized
this kind of knowledge, and were kind to the young couple, who were now
leading a tolerably comfortable life, and had a family of three children.
To fancy their joy at seeing a genuine Christian missionary is almost
out of our power in these days of swift communication, when nothing is
any longer a marvel; but if we could put ourselves in their place, we
might paint a wonderful picture of thankfulness, surprise, and simple,
rock-like faith. The latter part of Lent was spent in travelling, as the
khan broke up his encampment, and went on across a chain of mountains to
a great city, Karakorum, or Karakûm, on the river Orchon. Every vestige
of such a city has disappeared centuries ago, but Marco Polo mentions it
and describes its streets, situation, defences, etc. He arrived there
nearly twenty years later, and noticed that it was surrounded by a strong
rampart of earth, there being no good supply of stone in those parts.
The passage of the Changai Mountains was a terrible undertaking; the
cold was intense and the weather stormy, and the khan, with his usual
bland eclecticism, begged Rubruquis to “pray to God in his own fashion”
for milder weather, chiefly for the sake of the cattle. On Palm Sunday
the envoy blessed the willow-boughs he saw on his way, though he says
there were no buds on them yet; but they were near the city now, and
the weather had become more promising. Rubruquis had his eyes wide open
as he came to the first organized city of the Tartars, as Marco Polo
affirms this to have been. It had scarcely been built twenty years when
our monk visited it, and owed its origin to the son and successor of
Jengis-Khan. “There were two grand streets in it,” says Rubruquis, “one
of the Saracens, where the fairs are kept (held), and many merchants
resort thither, and one other street of the Cathayans (Chinese), who are
all artificers.” Many of the latter were captives, or at least subjects,
of the khan; for the Tartars had already conquered the greater part of
Northern China. The khan lived in a castle or palace outside the earthen
rampart. In Karakorum, again, the monk found many Christians, Armenian,
Georgian, Hungarian, and even of Western European origin. Among others
he mentions an Englishman--whom he calls Basilicus, and who had been
born in Hungary--and a few Germans. But the most important personage of
foreign birth was a French goldsmith, William Bouchier, whose wife was
a Hungarian, but of Mahometan parentage. This Benvenuto Cellini of the
East was rich and liberal, an excellent interpreter, thoroughly at home
in the Tartar dialects, a skilful artist, and in high favor at court. He
had just finished a masterpiece of mechanism and beauty which Rubruquis
thus minutely describes: “In the khan’s palace, because it was unseemly
to carry about bottles of milk and other drinks there, Master William
made him a great silver tree, at the root whereof were four silver
lions, having each one pipe, through which flowed pure cow’s milk; and
four other pipes were conveyed within the body of the tree unto the top
thereof, and the tops spread back again downwards, and upon every one
of them was a golden serpent, whose tails twined about the body of the
tree. And one of these pipes ran with wine, another with cara-cosmos,
another with _ball_--a drink made of honey--and another with a drink made
of rice. Between the pipes, at the top of the tree, he made an angel
holding a trumpet, and under the tree a hollow vault, wherein a man
might be hid; and a pipe ascended from this vault through the tree to
the angel. He first made bellows, but they gave not wind enough. Without
the palace walls there was a chamber wherein the several drinks were
brought; and there were servants there ready to pour them out when they
heard the angel sounding his trumpet. And the boughs of the tree were of
silver, and the leaves and the fruit. When, therefore, they want drink,
the master-butler crieth to the angel that he sound the trumpet. Then
he hearing (who is hid in the vault), bloweth the pipe, which goeth to
the angel, and the angel sets his trumpet to his mouth, and the trumpet
soundeth very shrill. Then the servants which are in the chamber hearing,
each of them poureth forth his drink into its proper pipe, and all the
pipes pour them forth from above, and they are received below in vessels
prepared for that purpose.”
This elaborate piece of plate makes one think rather of the XVIth
century banquets of the Medici and the Este than of feastings given
by a nomad Tartar in the wilds of Central Asia. The goldsmith was not
unknown to fame even in Europe, where he was called William of Paris.
Several old chroniclers speak of him, and his brother Roger was well
known as a goldsmith “living upon the great bridge at Paris.” This clever
artist very nearly fell a victim to the quackery of a Nestorian monk,
whereupon Rubruquis significantly comments thus: “He entreated him to
proceed either as an apostle doing miracles indeed, by virtue of prayer,
or to administer his potion as a physician, according to the art of
medicine.” Besides the Tartars and their Christian captives, Rubruquis
had opportunities of observing the numerous Chinese, or Cathayans, as
they were called, who have been mentioned as the artificers of the town.
There were also knots of Siberians, Kamtchatkans, and even inhabitants
of the islands between the extremities of Asia and America, where at
times the sea was frozen over. Rubruquis picked up a good deal of
miscellaneous information, chiefly about the Chinese. He mentions their
paper currency--a fact which Marco Polo subsequently verified--and their
mode of writing; _i.e._, with small paint-brushes, and each character or
figure signifying a whole word. The standard of value of the Russians,
he says, consisted in spotted furs--a currency which still exists in the
remoter parts of Siberia.
It was not without good reason, no doubt, that the monk-envoy made up
his mind to leave the country he had hoped either to evangelize or to
find already as orthodox as his own, and ruled by a great Christian
potentate. Such perseverance as he showed throughout his journey was not
likely to be daunted by slight obstacles; but finding the object of his
mission as far from attainment as when he first entered Tartary, he at
last reluctantly left the field. Only one European besides himself had
ventured so far--Friar Bartholomew of Cremona; but even he shrank before
a renewal of the hardships of mountain and desert travel, and chose
rather to stay behind with Master William, the hospitable goldsmith, till
some more convenient opportunity should present itself of returning to
his own country. Rubruquis accordingly started alone, with a servant,
an interpreter, and a guide; but though he had asked for leave to go
on Whitsunday, the permission was delayed till the festival of S. John
Baptist, the 24th of June. The khan made him a few trifling presents, and
gave him a complimentary letter to the King of France; but no definite
results were obtained. The homeward journey was long and tedious, and
the only provision made for the sustenance of the party was a permission
from the khan to take a sheep “once in four days, wherever they could
find it.” Sometimes they had nothing to eat for three days together, and
only a little cosmos to drink, and more than once, having missed the
stations of the wandering tribes whom they had reckoned on meeting, even
the supply of cosmos was exhausted. About two months after his departure
from Karakorum, Rubruquis met Sartach, the great chief who had sheltered
him for some time on his way to the river Don. Some belongings of the
mission having been left in Sartach’s care, the envoy asked him to return
them, but was told they were in charge of Baatu, Rubruquis’ other friend
and protector. Sartach was on his way to join Mandchu-Khan, and was of
course surrounded by the two hundred houses and innumerable chests which
belonged to the establishment of a Tartar patriarch. If this was not
exactly civilization, it was companionship, and the envoy must have been
glad of a meeting which replenished his exhausted stores and suggested
domestic comfort and abundance. More rough travelling on horseback, more
experiences of hunger and cold (for the autumn was already coming on),
more fording of rivers, and the monk found himself at Baatu’s court. It
was the 16th of September--a year after he had left the chieftain to push
on to the court of the Grand-Khan. Here he was joyfully and courteously
received, and recovered nearly all his property; but as the Tartars had
concluded that the whole embassy must have perished long ago, they had
allowed some Nestorian priest, a wanderer under the protection now of
Sartach, now of Baatu and other khans, to appropriate various Psalters,
books, and ecclesiastical vestments. Three young men, Europeans, whom
Rubruquis had left behind, had nearly been reduced to bondage under the
same pretext, but they had not suffered personal ill-treatment. The kind
offices of some influential Armenians had staved off the evil day, and
the timely arrival of the long-missing envoy secured them their freedom.
Rubruquis now joined Baatu’s court, which was journeying westward to a
town called Sarai, on the eastern bank of the Volga; but the progress
of the encumbered Tartars was so slow that he left them after a month’s
companionship, and pushed on with his party, till he reached Sarai on
the feast of All Saints. After this the country was almost an unbroken
desert; but our traveller once more fell in with one of his Tartar
friends, a son of Sartach, who was out upon a hawking expedition, and
gave him a guard to protect him from various fierce Mahometan tribes that
infested the neighborhood.
Here ended his travels in Tartary proper; but his hardships were far
from ended yet. Through Armenia and the territories of Turkish and
Koordish princes he journeyed slowly and uncomfortably, in dread of the
violence of his own guides and guards, as well as of the insults of the
populations whose country he traversed. He says these delays “arose in
part from the difficulty of procuring horses, but chiefly because the
guide chose to stop, often for three days together, in one place, for his
own business; and, though much dissatisfied, I durst not complain, as he
might have slain me and those with me, or sold us all for slaves, and
there was none to hinder it.”
Journeying across Asia Minor and over Mount Taurus, he took ship at last
for Cyprus. Here he learnt that S. Louis, who had been in the Holy Land
at the time of his departure, had gone back to France. He would very much
have wished to deliver his letters and presents of silk pelisses and
furs to the king in person; but this was not granted him. The provincial
of his order, whom he met at Cyprus, desired him to write his account
and send his gifts to the king; and as in those days there was creeping
in among the monks a habit of restless wandering, his superior, who was,
it seems, a reformer and strict disciplinarian, tried the obedience
and humility of the famous traveller by sending him to his convent at
Acre, whence, by the king’s order, he had started. Rubruquis stood the
test, but could not forbear imploring the king, by writing, to use his
influence with the provincial to allow him a short stay in France and
one audience of his royal master. Little is known of the great traveller
and pioneer after this; and whether he ever got leave to see the king
is doubtful. He fell back into obscurity, and it is presumed that Marco
Polo did not even know of his previous travels over the same ground as
the Polos explored. No record of his embassy remained but the Latin
letter addressed to S. Louis, and even in France his fame was unknown
for many centuries. It was not till after the invention of printing that
his adventures became fairly known to the literary world, although Roger
Bacon, one of his own order, had given a spirited abstract of his travels
in one of his works. This, too, was in Latin, and after a time became
a sealed book to the vulgar; so that it was not at least till the year
1600 that the old traveller’s name was again known. Hakluyt’s _Collection
of Voyages and Travels_ contains an English translation of Rubruquis’
letter, and twenty-five years later Purchas reproduced it _in toto_ from
a copy found in a college library at Cambridge. Bergeron, a French
priest, put it into French, not from the original, but from Purchas’
English version. Since then Rubruquis has taken his place among the few
famous voyagers of olden times; but from the vagueness of his language,
the lack of geographical science in his day, and perhaps also the
mistakes of careless copyists, it is not easy to trace his course upon
the map. One fact, however, he ascertained and insisted upon, which a
geographical society, had it existed in his time, would have been glad to
register, together with an honorable mention of the discoverer--_i.e._,
the nature of the great lake called the Caspian Sea. The old Greeks had
correctly called it an _inland_ sea, but an idea had since prevailed that
it possessed some communication with the Northern Ocean. Rubruquis proved
the contrary, but no attention was paid to his single assertion, and
books of geography, compiled at home from ancient maps and MSS., without
a reference, however distant, to the _facts_ recorded by adventurous
men who had seen foreign shores with their eyes, calmly continued to
propagate the old error.
A PARAPHRASE, FROM THE GREEK.
Οὐκ ἔθανες, Πρώτη, κ. τ. λ.--_Greek Anthology._
Protê, thou didst not die,
But thou didst fly,
When we saw thee no more, to a sunnier clime;
In the isles of the blest,
In the golden west,
Where thy spirit let loose springs joyous and light
O’er the verdurous floor,
That is strewn evermore
With blossoms that fade not, nor droop from their prime.
Thou hast made thee a home
Where no sorrow shall come,
No cloud overshadow thy noon of delight;
Cold or heat shall not vex thee,
Nor sickness perplex thee,
Nor hunger, nor thirst; no touch of regret
For the things thou hast cherished,
The forms that have perished,
For lover or kindred, thy fancy shall fret;
But thy joy hath no stain,
Thy remembrance no pain,
And the heights that we guess at thy sunshine makes plain.
THE LAW OF GOD AND THE REGULATIONS OF SOCIETY.
SUMMARY CONSIDERATIONS ON LAW.
FROM THE FRENCH OF THE COMTE DE BREDA.
“There are laws for the society of ants and of bees; how could
any one suppose that there are none for human society, and that
it is left to the chance of inventing them?”--_De Bonald._
I.--THE MODERN STATE.
Never before was liberty so much talked about; never before was the very
idea of it so utterly lost. Tyrants have been destroyed, it is said. This
is a false assertion it may be (or rather, is it not certain?) that it
has become more difficult for a sovereign to govern tyrannically, but
tyranny is not dead--quite the contrary.
All unlimited power is, of its own nature, tyrannical. Now, it is such
a power that the modern state desires to wield. The state is held up
to us as the supreme arbiter of good and evil; and, if we believe its
defenders, it cannot err, its laws being in every case, and at all times,
binding.
People have banished God from the government of human society; but they
have made to themselves a new god, despotic and blind, without hearing
and without voice, whose power knows how to reach its slaves as well
in the temple as in the public places, as well in the palace as in the
humblest cot.
What is there, indeed, more divine than not to do wrong? God
alone, speaking to the human conscience, either directly or by his
representatives, is the infallible judge of good and evil. No human power
whatsoever can declare all that emanates from it to be necessarily right
without usurping the place of God, and declaring itself the sovereign
master of the soul as well as of the body. The last refuge of the slaves
of antiquity--the human conscience--would no longer exist for the people
of modern times, if it were true that every law is binding from the
mere fact of its promulgation. Hence the modern state, but lately so
boastful, has begun to waver and to doubt its own powers. It encounters
two principal obstacles, as unlike in their form as in their origin.
On one hand it beholds Catholics, sustained by their knowledge of law,
its origin and its essence, resisting passively, and preparing themselves
to submit to persecutions without even shrinking. On the other it
meets, in these our days, the most formidable insurrections. There are
multitudes, blind as the state representatives--but excusable, inasmuch
as their rebellion is against an authority which owes its sway only to
caprice or theory--who reply thus to power: “We are as good as you; you
have no right over us other than that of brute force; we will endeavor to
oppose you with a strength equal to yours; and when we shall have gained
the victory, we will make new laws and new constitutions, wherein all
that you call lawful shall be called unlawful, and all that you consider
crime shall be deemed virtue.”
If it were true that law could spring only from the human will, these
madmen would be reasonable in the extreme. Thus the state is powerless
against them. It drags on an uncertain existence, constantly threatened
with the most terrible social wars, and enjoying a momentary peace only
on condition of never laying down arms. Modern armies are standing ones;
the modern police have become veritable armies, and they sleep neither
day nor night. At this price do our states exist, trade, grow rich, and
become satisfied with themselves.
These constant commotions are not alone the vengeance of the living
God disowned and outraged; they are also the inevitable consequence of
that extremity of pride and folly which has induced human assemblies to
believe that it belongs to them to decide finally between right and wrong.
In truth, “if God is not the author of law, there is no law really
binding.” We may, for the love of God, obey existing powers, even though
they be illegitimate; but this submission has its limits. It must cease
the moment that the human law prescribes anything contrary to the law
of God. As for people without faith, we would in vain seek for a motive
powerful enough to induce them to submit to anything displeasing to them.
II.--MODERN LIBERTY.
The people of our generation consider themselves more free, more
unrestrained, than those who have gone before them. It is not to our
generation, however, that the glory accrues of having first thrown
off the yoke. Our moderns themselves acknowledge that they have had
predecessors, and they agree with us in declaring that “the new spirit”
made its appearance in the world about the XVIth century.[46]
In truth, the only yoke which has been cast off since then is that of
God, which seemed too heavy. All at once thought pronounced itself freed
from the shackles of ecclesiastical authority; but, at the outset, it
was far from intended to deny the idea of a divine right superior to all
human right.
Despite the historical falsehoods which have found utterance in our day,
it was chiefly princes who propagated Protestantism; and, most often,
they attained their end only by violence. When successful, they added to
their temporal title a religious one; they made themselves bishops or
popes, and thus became all the more powerful over their subjects. There
was no longer any refuge from the abuse of power of the rulers of this
world; for it was the interest of these despots to call themselves the
representatives of God. By means of this title they secularized dioceses,
convents, the goods of the church, and even the ministers of their new
religion. This term was then used to express in polite language an idea
of spoliation and of hypocritical and uncurbed tyranny.
The moderns have gone farther: they have attempted to secularize law
itself. This time, again, the word hides a thought which, if it were
openly expressed, would shock; the law has become atheistical, and not
all the opposition which the harshness of this statement has aroused can
prevent it from still expressing a truth. The inexorable logic of facts
leads directly from the Reformation to the Revolution. Princes themselves
sowed the seeds of revolt which will yet despoil them of their power and
their thrones; while as for the people, they have gained nothing. They
are constantly tyrannized over; but their real masters are unknown, and
their only resource against the encroachments or the abuse of power is an
appeal to arms.
It is not, then, true that liberty finds greater space in the modern
world than in the ancient Christian world. To prove this, I need but a
single fact which has direct relation with my subject.
While Europe was still enveloped in “the darkness of the Middle Ages,”
Catholic theologians freely taught, from all their chairs, that “an
unjust law is no law”--“Lex injusta non est lex.” Now, are there, at the
present day, many pulpits from which this principle, the safeguard of all
liberty and of all independence, the protector of all rights, and the
defence of the helpless, might be proclaimed with impunity? Do we not
see the prohibitions, the lawsuits, the _appels comme d’abus_ which the
boldness of such a maxim would call forth?
Human governments have changed in form, but their tyranny has not ceased
to grow; and the free men of the olden society have become the slaves in
a new order of things--they have even reached a point at which they know
not even in what liberty consists.
III.--DIVINE ORIGIN OF LAW.
I know, and I hear beforehand, the response which the doctors of modern
rights will here give me “Yes,” say they, “it is very true that the
Catholic Church has always claimed the right of judging laws and of
refusing obedience to such as displeased her; but in this is precisely
the worst abuse. That which would domineer over human reason, the
sovereign of the world, is tyranny _par excellence_; this, in truth, is
the special mark of Catholicity, and it is this which has ever made it
the religion of the ignorant and the cowardly.”
Is, then, the maxim I have just recalled the invention of Catholic
theologians? Is it true that the teachers of the ultramontane doctrine
alone have contended that the intrinsic worth of a law must be sought
beyond and above them, beyond and above the human power which proclaims
it? Not only has this elementary principle not been devised by our
theologians, but even the pagan philosophers themselves had reached it.
Cicero but summed up the teaching universally received by philosophers
worthy of the name, when he said that the science of law should not be
sought in the edicts of the pretor, nor even in the laws of the twelve
tables; and that the most profound philosophy alone could aid in judging
laws and teaching us their value.[47]
This is not to degrade reason, which this same Cicero has defined, or
rather described, in admirable language. He found therein something
grand, something sublime; he declared that it is more fit to command than
to obey; that it values little what is merely human; that it is gifted
with a peculiar elevation which nothing daunts, which yields to no one,
and which is unconquerable.[48]
But remark, it is only with regard to human powers and allurements that
reason shows itself so exalted and haughty. It requires something greater
than man to make it submit; and it _obeys_ only God or his delegates.
“Stranger,” said Plato to Clinias the Cretan, “whom do you consider the
first author of your laws? _Is it a god? Is it a man?_”
“Stranger,” replied Clinias, “it is a god; we could not rightly accord
this title to any other.”[49]
So, also, tradition tells us that Minos went, every ninth day, to consult
Jupiter, his father, whose replies he committed to writing. Lycurgus
wished to have his laws confirmed by the Delphian Apollo, and this god
replied that he would dictate them himself. At Rome the nymph Egeria
played the same _rôle_ with Numa. Everywhere is felt the necessity
of seeking above man the title in virtue of which he may command his
fellow-men.
If we turn now from the fabulous traditions of the ancient world, we
still find an absolute truth proclaimed by its sages; one that affirms
the existence of an eternal law--_quiddam æternum_--which was called the
natural law, and which serves as a criterion whereby to judge the worth
of the laws promulgated by man.
Cicero declares it absurd to consider right everything set down in the
constitutions or the laws.[50] And he is careful to add that neither is
public opinion any more competent to determine the right.[51]
The sovereign law, therefore--that which no human law may violate without
the penalty of becoming void--has God himself for its author.
The laws of states may be unjust and abominable, and, by consequence,
bind no one. There is, on the other hand, a natural law, the source and
measure of other laws, originating before all ages, before any law had
been written or any city built.[52]
This doctrine, to support which I have designedly cited only pagan
authors, is also that of Catholic theologians; for example, S. Thomas and
Suarez. But the philosophical school of the last century has so perverted
the meaning of the term _nature--law of nature_, that certain Catholic
authors (M. de Bonald, for instance) have scrupled to use the consecrated
term. It is necessary, then, to explain its true sense.
IV.--NATURAL LAW ACCORDING TO PAGAN PHILOSOPHERS.
The nature of a being is that which constitutes its fitness to attain its
end. The idea, therefore, which a person has of the nature of man, by
consequence determines that which he will have of his end, and hence of
the rule which should govern his actions.
The materialists, for example, who deny the immortality of the soul, and
whose horizon is bounded by the limits of the present life, are able
to teach only a purely epicurean or utilitarian morality. They cannot
consistently plead a motive higher than an immediate, or at least a
proximate, well-being; for, what is more uncertain than the duration of
our life? In the strikingly anti-philosophic language of the XVIIIth
century, _the state of nature_ was a hypothetical state, at once innocent
and barbarous, anterior to all society. It is to society that this theory
attributes the disorders of man and the loss of certain primitive and
inalienable rights which the sect of pseudo-philosophers boasted of
having regained, and by the conquest whereof the corrupted and doting
France of 1789 was prostrated.
The philosophers of antiquity, on the contrary, notwithstanding their
numerous errors, and despite the polytheism which they exteriorly
professed, had arrived at so profound a knowledge of man and his nature
that the fathers and doctors of the church have often spoken of the
discoveries of their intellect as a kind of _natural revelation_ made to
them by God.[53]
We have already heard Cicero say that the natural law is eternal, and
superior to all human laws. I shall continue to quote him, because of
his clearness, and because he admirably sums up the teaching of the
philosophers who preceded him.[54]
The sound philosophy which should guide us--according to him, the science
of law--teaches us that it is far more sublime to submit to the divine
mind, to the all-powerful God, than to the emperors and mighty ones of
this earth; for it is a kind of partnership between God and man. Right
reason (_ratio recta_) is the same for the one and the other; and law
being nothing else than right reason, it may be said that one same law
links us with the gods. Now, the common law is also the common right, and
when people have a common right they belong, in some manner, to the same
country. We must, then, consider this world as a country common to the
gods and to men. Man is, in truth, like to God. And for what end has God
created and gifted man like to himself? That he may arrive at justice.
Human society is bound by one same right, and law is the same for all.
This law is the just motive (the right reason, _ratio recta_) of all
precepts and prohibitions; he who is ignorant of it, whether written
or not, knows not justice. If uprightness consisted in submission to
the written laws and constitutions of nations, and if, as some pretend,
utility could be the measure of good, he who expected to profit thereby
would be justified in neglecting or violating the laws.
This remark is peculiarly applicable to the present time. It is precisely
utility and the increase of wealth or of comforts--in a word, material
interests--which the greater number of modern legislators have had
chiefly in view; the result is that society scarcely has the right to
feel indignant against those who may deem it to their advantage to
disturb it. Religion, say they, has nothing in common with politics; the
state, inasmuch as it is a state, need not trouble itself about God; the
things of this world should be regulated with regard to this world, and
without reference to the supernatural. Suppose it so; but then, in virtue
of what authority will you impose your laws? There is no human power
able to bend or to conquer one human will which does not acknowledge
it.[55]
The basis of right is the natural love of our fellow-beings which nature
has planted within us. Nature also commands us to honor God. It is not
fear which renders worship necessary; it is the bond which exists between
God and man. If popular or royal decrees could determine right, a whim
of the multitude might render lawful theft, adultery, or forgery. If it
be true that a proclamation dictated by fools can change the order of
nature, why may not evil become, one day, good? But the sages teach that
the human mind did not invent law; it has its birth-place in the bosom
of God, and is co-eternal with him; it is nothing else than the unerring
reason of Jupiter himself; it is reflected in the mind of the wise man;
it can never be repealed.
This “right reason which comes to us from the gods” (_recta et a numine
deorum tracta ratio_) is what is usually termed the _natural_ law; and
the beautiful language of Cicero recalls this magnificent verse of the
IVth Psalm: “Quis ostendit nobis bona? Signatum est super nos lumen
vultus tui, Domine.”
V.--INFLUENCE OF PANTHEISM ON MODERN LAW.
Pagan teaching, how elevated soever it may be, is always incomplete; and
this is evident even from the words of Cicero.
Since law comes from God, it is very clear that it will be known more
or less correctly according as our idea of God is more or less correct.
This it is that gives so great a superiority, first, to the law of Moses,
before the coming of Jesus Christ, and to all Christian legislation
since.
The Jews had not merely a vague knowledge of the precepts of the divine
law. This law, in its principal provisions, had been directly revealed to
them. Christians have something better still, since the Eternal Word was
made man, and the Word is precisely “the true light which enlighteneth
every man coming into this world.”[56] The philosophers of antiquity saw
this light from afar off; we have _beheld_ that of which they merely
affirmed the existence; the Jews contemplated it as through a veil, and
awaited its coming. IT was made flesh; it brought us life; “it shone in
the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.”[57]
It is not the fault of the Word or of his manifestation, says S. Thomas
on this subject, if there are minds who see not this light. There is
here, not darkness, but closed eyes.[58]
It is God himself, therefore, whom man refuses to acknowledge when he
rejects the fundamental law, which alone deserves the name of law. Human
pride and insolence go beyond forgetfulness or simple negation when they
have the audacity to put a human law in the place of and above the divine
law; which last crime is nothing less than the deification of man. This
philosophic consequence of the secularization of the law was inevitable,
and is openly displayed in modern doctrines. Atheists, properly so
called, are rare; but the present generation is infected with Pantheism.
Now, Pantheism proclaims, without disguise and without shame, the
divinity of man.
Let us add that this error is the only foundation upon which man may
logically rest to defend modern rights. It produces, with regard to
constitutions and laws, two principal effects, which it suffices but to
indicate, that every honest mind may at once recognize their existence
and their lamentable consequences.
Pantheism, firstly, destroys individualities, or, as the Germans
call them, _subjectivities_; it sweeps them away, and causes them to
disappear in the Great Whole. Do we not likewise see personality, simple
or associated--that is to say, individual liberty, associations, and
corporations--little by little reduced to annihilation by the modern idea
of the state? Does not modern theory make also of the state another grand
whole, beside which nothing private can exist?
To reach this result, they represent the state as expressing the
aggregate of all the particular wills, and they seek, in a pretended
“general will,” the supreme and infallible source of law. But even were
this will as general as theory desires, it would not be the less human,
or, by consequence, the less subject to error. Whence comes it, then,
that they make it the sovereign arbiter of good and evil, of truth and
falsehood, of justice and injustice? The Pantheists reply that “God is in
man and in the world; that he is one and the same thing with the world;
that he is identical with the nature of things, and consequently subject
to change.” The general will, the expression of the universal conscience,
is then a manifestation of the divine will; and this would allow it to
change without ever erring.
This answers all, in truth; but it may lead us too far. If, as says
Hegel, God is subjective--that is to say, if He is in man, or, more
exactly still, if He is man himself and the substance of nature--neither
right, nor law, nor justice could remain objective. In other words, if
man is God, there is no longer any possible distinction between good and
evil. And this conclusion has been drawn by the learned German socialist,
Lassalle. He denies the notion of an immutable right; he is unwilling
that we should any longer speak of the family, property, justice, etc.,
in absolute terms. According to him, these are but abstract and unreal
generalities. There have been, on all these subjects, Greek, Roman,
German, etc., ideas; but these are only historical recollections. Ideas
change, some even disappear; and if, some day, the universal conscience
should decide that the idea of proprietorship has had its day, then
would commence a new era in history, during which there could be no
longer either property or proprietors without incurring the guilt of
injustice.[59] From the stand-point of Pantheism, this reasoning is
irrefutable; and, on the other hand, we have just seen that Pantheism
alone could justify the modern theory of the general will, the supreme
arbiter of law.
VI.--HAS THE GENERAL WILL RULED SINCE 1789?
I have just quoted a socialist whose works, though little known in
France, are of extreme importance. Ferdinand Lassalle, a Jew by birth,
by nationality a Prussian, is possessed of extensive knowledge, critical
genius of the highest order, and unsparing logic. We have seen him draw
the theoretical consequences of Pantheism applied to law; and it will
not be without interest to know how he judges the practical results
of the modern theory of rights, as shown in the French Revolution.
The socialists have a special authority for speaking of “immortal
principles”; for they admit them without hesitation, and their teaching
proved that they comprehend them wonderfully.
The _Declaration of the Rights of Man_ is the most authentic summing
up of these famous principles; and it is therein that the modern
theory of law will be found most clearly stated. “Law,” says Art.
6, “is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has the
right of co-operating in its formation, either personally or by his
representatives.”
It would seem, from this solemn proclamation, that since then, or at
least in the first fervor of this “glorious” revolution, the majority
of the “sovereign people” should have been called to “form the laws.”
This has been said; it has even been supported at the mouth of the
cannon--for, as has been wittily remarked by M. de Maistre, “the masters
of these poor people have had recourse even to artillery while deriding
them. They said to them: ‘You think you do not will this law; but, be
assured, you do will it. If you dare to refuse it, we will pour upon you
a shower of shot, to punish you for not willing what you do will.’ And it
was done.”[60]
What then took place, and how did it happen that the general will,
which had undertaken to make fundamental and irrevocable laws, should
have accepted, in the first five years of its freedom, three different
constitutions and a _régime_ like that of the Reign of Terror?
Lassalle replies that it is not at all the people who made the
revolution, and that the general will was not even asked to manifest
itself. He recalls the famous pamphlet of Sieyès, and corrects its
title. It is not true, says he, that the _Tiers État_ was then nothing;
the increase of personal property has, since then, brought about a
_révolution économique_, thanks to which the _tiers état_ was, in truth,
all. But legally it was nothing, which was not much to its liking; for
the former ranks of society still existed by right, although their real
strength was not in keeping with their legal condition. The work of the
French Revolution was, therefore, to give to the _tiers état_ a legal
position suitable to its actual importance.
Now, the _tiers_, first and foremost, assumed itself to be the equivalent
of the entire people. “It considered that its cause was the cause
of humanity.” Thus the attraction was real and powerful. The voices
raised to protest were unable to make themselves heard. Our author
cites, on this subject, a curious instance of clear-sightedness. An
anti-revolutionary journal, _The Friend of the King_, exclaimed, “Who
shall say whether or not the despotism of the _bourgeoisie_ shall not
succeed the pretended aristocracy of the nobility?”
It is this, indeed, which has come to pass, continues Lassalle; the
_tiers état_ has become, in its turn, the privileged class. The proof is
that the wealth of the citizen became immediately the legal condition of
power in the state.
Since 1791, in the constitution of Sept. 3 we find (chap. i., sects. 1
and 2) a distinction established between active citizens and passive
citizens. The former are those who pay a certain quota of direct
contribution; and they alone possess the right of voting. Moreover,
all hired laborers were declared not active; and this excluded workmen
from the right of voting. It matters little that the tax was small; the
principle was laid down requiring some amount of fortune in order to
exercise a political right. “The wealth of the citizen had become the
condition necessary for obtaining power in the state, as nobility or
landed property had been in the Middle Ages.”
The principle of the vote-tax held sway until the recent introduction of
universal suffrage.
Our socialist, proceeding directly to the question of taxes, proves
that the _bourgeoisie moderne_, without inventing indirect taxation,
has nevertheless made it the basis of an entire system, and has settled
upon it all the expenses of state. Now, indirect taxes are such as are
levied beforehand upon all necessaries, as salt, corn, beer, meat, fuel,
or, still more, upon what we need for our protection--the expenses of
the administration of justice, stamped paper, etc. Generally, in making
a purchase, the buyer pays the tax, without perceiving that it is that
which increases the price. Now, it is clear that because an individual
is twenty, fifty, or a hundred times richer, it does not follow that he
will, on that account, consume twenty, fifty, or a hundred times more
salt, bread, meat, etc., than a workman or a person of humble condition.
Thus it happens that the great body of indirect taxes is paid by the
poorest classes (from the single fact that they are the most numerous).
Thus is it brought about, in a hidden way, that the _tiers état_ pay
relatively less taxes than the _quatrième état_.
Concerning the instruction of adults, Lassalle says that, instead of
being left to the clergy as heretofore, it now in fact belongs to
the daily press. But securities, stamps, and advertisements give to
journalism another privilege of capital.[61]
This sketch suffices; and I deem it needless to add that I am far from
concluding with the socialists. I am so much the more free to disagree
with them as I do not by any means admit the “immortal principles,” but
it seems to me to follow evidently from the preceding observations that
it is not true, in fact, that the general will has made the laws since
1789.
VII.--DOES UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE EXPRESS THE GENERAL WILL?
Has the introduction of universal suffrage modified, in any great degree,
this state of things? Is it any more certain since 1848, than before,
that the nation is governed by the general will? We may content ourselves
here by appealing to the testimony of honest men. If the general will
were truly the master of all the powers in France, our country, which
to-day, so it is said, has only the government that it desires, would
be a model of union and concord; there could be in the opposition party
only an exceedingly small minority (otherwise the term general would be
unjustifiable), and we would follow peacefully the ways most pleasing to
us.
This would not be saying--mark it well!--that those ways are good. That
is another question, to which we will return; but now we are dealing with
the question, Are our laws to-day formed or not formed by the general
will, according to the formula which I have quoted from the _Declaration
of the Rights of Man_?
Notwithstanding the evidence for the negative, I think it well here to
analyze hastily that which M. Taine has just given in a little pamphlet
containing many truths.[62] M. Taine, being a free-thinker and a man of
the times, cannot be suspected of taking an ultramontane or clerical view
of the case.
M. Taine is far from demanding the abolition of universal suffrage. He
believes it in conformity with justice; for he does not admit that his
money can be demanded or he himself sent to the frontier without his
own consent, either expressed or tacit. His only wish is that the right
of suffrage be not illusory, and that the electoral law be adapted “to
the French of 1791, to the peasant, the workman, etc.,” be he “stupid,
ignorant, or ill-informed.” From this M. Taine proves at the outset that
the ballot-roll is a humbug; and I believe that no person of sense will
contest the point. He immediately enters upon a statistical examination
of the composition of the elective world in France; and he arrives at
the following result: “Of twenty voters, ten are peasants, four workmen,
three demi-bourgeois, three educated men, comfortable or rich. Now, the
electoral law, as all law, should have regard to the majority, to the
first fourteen.” It behooves us, then, to know who these fourteen are
who are called to frame the law; that is to say, to decide, by their
representatives it is true, but sovereignly, on good and evil, justice
and injustice, and, necessarily, the fate of the country.
M. Taine, in this connection, makes some new calculations which may be
thus summed up: The rural population embraces seventy out of one hundred
of the entire population, hence fourteen voters out of twenty. Now, in
France, there are thirty-nine illiterate out of every hundred males,
almost all belonging to the classes which M. Taine numbers among the
rural population; which enables him to find that seven out of every
fourteen rural voters cannot even read. I may observe, in passing, that
a peasant who cannot read, but who knows his catechism, may be of a much
sounder morality than M. Taine himself; but I willingly proclaim that the
seven electors in question could and should have a mediocre political
intelligence.
This agreeable writer recounts, in a spicy way, a number of anecdotes
which prove “the ignorance and credulity” of the rural populations on
similar matters; and he thence concludes that the peasants “are still
subjects, but under a nameless master.” This is precisely what I said
at the beginning, not only of peasants, but of all modern people in
general. Be there a king on the throne or not, somebody decrees this,
somebody decrees that; and the subject depends, in a hundred ways, on
this abstract and undetermined somebody--“Through the collector, through
the mayor, through the sub-inspector of forests, through the commissary
of police, through the field-keeper, through the clerks of justice, for
making a door, for felling a tree, building a shed, opening a stall,
transporting a cask of wine, etc., etc.”
All this expresses well and depicts admirably the ways of modern liberty;
and I cannot refrain from citing this last sketch, equally amusing and
true: “The mayor knows that in town, in an elegant apartment, is a worthy
gentleman, attired in broidered gown, who receives him two or three times
a year, speaks to him with authority and condescension, and often puts to
him embarrassing questions. But when this gentleman goes away, another
takes his place quite similar and in the same garb, and the mayor, on
his return home, says with satisfaction: ‘Monsieur the prefect always
preserves his good will towards me, although he has been changed many
times.’”
The _plébiscite_, the appeal to the people, the invitation to vote on the
form of government, addressed to this kind of electors--is it not all
a cunning trick? M. Taine thinks so, and many others with him; but he
supposes that this same elector will be, at least, capable of “choosing
the particular man in whom he has most confidence.” It is with him,
says he, in the choice of one who shall make the laws, as in the choice
of the physician or the lawyer whom one may prefer. Although it is not
my intention to discuss here the opinions of this author, I beg him to
remark that his comparison is strikingly faulty; we cannot choose whom
we please for our physician or for our lawyer. The former is obliged to
go through a course of studies in order to merit his diploma; the latter
must fulfil the conditions necessary to be admitted to the bar. To frame
the laws is another thing; not the slightest preparation is exacted from
those eligible to this duty. Apparently it is not considered worth the
trouble.
The ballot-roll and _plébiscite_ being disposed of, M. Taine returns
to figures, to study what transpires when the electors are called upon
to choose a deputy by district. This gives, says he, one deputy for
twenty thousand voters spread over a surface of one thousand kilometres
square, etc. Of the twenty thousand voters, how many will have a definite
opinion of the candidate presented to them? Scarcely one in ten beyond
the outskirts of the town; scarcely one in four or five in the whole
district. There remains the resource of advice; but “the spirit of
equality is all-powerful, and the hierarchy is wanting.”
We touch here the most sorrowful wound of our social state; and this term
even, is it not misapplied?--for we have no longer any order, or, by
consequence, any social state. “As a general rule,” continues M. Taine,
“the country people receive counsel only from their equals.” Therefore
it is easy to employ evil means. These evil means may be summed up,
according to the same author, in the abuse of governmental influence,
and in a corruption whose form varies, but which makes the affair of an
election an affair of money.
There should be, and I have alluded to it in passing, many exceptions
made with regard to what M. Taine says concerning the rural population.
He believes them manifestly less able to vote than the city populations,
while I am of quite the contrary opinion; but it still remains true that
direct universal suffrage, such as we have, does not allow a person
to choose from a knowledge of the case, and that, in reality, the
general will has not, up to the present day, been able to find its true
expression.
This is all that I need prove for the present.
VIII.--IS THE GENERAL WILL COMPETENT TO MAKE LAWS?
This is a still higher question, and one which we must now approach.
Admitting that the general will could make itself known, is it an
authority competent to make laws?
But before starting let us lay down a first principle which, quite
elementary as it is, seems to be as much forgotten as the others: if
the natural law exist not anteriorly to enjoin respect for human laws,
human power would have no other ground of existence, no other support
than force. Without a divine lawgiver, there is, in truth, no moral
obligation.[63] The hypothesis of a previous agreement among the members
of society would not resolve the difficulty; for an agreement would not
be able to bind any one, at least if there were no higher authority to
secure it.[64]
Whatever may be the immediate origin of law--be it promulgated by
a sovereign, enacted by an assembly, or directly willed by the
multitude--it would still be unable to rule, if we do not suppose a
law anterior and, as Cicero says, eternal, which, in the first place,
prescribes obedience to subjects, and, in the second, fidelity to
reciprocal engagements, promises, and oaths. This superior law being the
natural law, it is always, and in every case, impossible to suppress or
to elude it.
Meanwhile, what is understood by the general will? Is it the unanimity
of wills? No one, so far as I know, has ever exacted this condition.
The question is, then, taking things at their best, of the will of the
majority. People grant this, and often give to our modern governments
the name of governments of the majority. They deduce then from this
principle, that in a population of thirty millions of men, for example,
it is lawful that the will of the twenty millions should rule over that
of the remaining ten millions. If the constitution of a kingdom, says
Burke, is an arithmetical problem, the calculation is just; but if the
minority refuse to submit, the majority will be able to govern only by
the aid of _la lanterne_.[65]
Scaffolds, shootings, exile, prison--such are, in truth, the institutions
which have chiefly flourished since the famous _Declaration of the Rights
of Man_.
In the eyes of a man who knows how to reason, continues the English
orator, this opinion is ridiculous.
It could not be justified, unless it were well proved that the majority
of men are enlightened, virtuous, wise, self-sacrificing, and incapable
of preferring their own interest to that of others. No one has ever dared
to say that legislators should make laws for the sake of making them, and
without troubling themselves concerning the welfare of those for whom the
laws are made. Now, the laws being made for all, the majority, if it had
the qualities necessary for legislating, should concern itself still more
about the minority than about itself.
The Comte de la Marck[66] relates that when Mirabeau became too much
excited concerning the rights and privileges of man, it happened
sometimes that he amused himself by curtailing his accounts. He cut off
first women, children, the ignorant, the vicious, etc. Once, the nation
being thus reduced to the little portion whose moral qualities it became
necessary to estimate, “I began,” says he, “to deduct those who lack
reason, those who have false notions, those who value their own interests
above everything, those who lack education and knowledge matured by
reflection; and I then asked him if the men who merit to be spoken of
with dignity and respect would not find themselves reduced to a number
infinitely small. Now, according to my principle, I maintained that the
government should act _for_ the people, and not _by_ them--that is to
say, not by the opinion of the multitude; and I proved, by historical
extracts and by examples which we had unfortunately under our eyes, that
reason and good sense fly from men in proportion as they are gathered
together in greater numbers.”
Mirabeau contented himself with replying that one must flatter the people
in order to govern them, which amounts to saying that one must cheat them.
For the rest, this same Mirabeau acknowledged that equality, in the
revolutionary sense, is absurd, and the passion which some have for it
he called a violent paroxysm. It is he who best characterized the true
result of the destruction of all social order. He called it “vanity’s
upsetting.” He could not have spoken better; and the vanity which
goes so low could have no other result than that which we behold--the
premeditated absence or suppression of all true superiority.
This episode on equality is not a digression, for the system of
majorities supposes it. Now, it is absolutely anti-natural. According to
the beautiful idea of Aristotle:[67] there is in man himself a soul and
a body; the one predominating and made to command, the other to obey; the
equality or the shifting of power between these two elements would be
equally fatal to them. It is the same between man and the other animals,
between tame animals and wild. The harmony of sex is analogous, and we
even find some traces of this principle in inanimate objects; as, for
example, in the harmony of sounds. Therefore S. Augustine defines order
thus: “Such a disposition of things similar and dissimilar as shall give
to each what is proper to it”--_Ordo est parium dispariumque rerum sua
cuique tribuens dispositio_;[68] and S. Thomas hence concludes that order
supposes inequality: _Nomen ordinis inæqualitatem importat_.[69]
But the “immortal principles” have changed all that, according to
Sganarelle; so their work, in its final analysis, results in a disorder
without name.
The external disorder is visible and pretty generally acknowledged; but
the moral disorder passes unperceived. By means of equality on the one
hand, and of the secularization of the law on the other, they arrive at
this frightful result: for example, that regicide and parricide are, in
justice, but ordinary crimes; if, moreover, regicide profits the people,
it is worthy of eulogy. Sacrilege is nothing more than a superstitious
fiction. In fine, _respect_ being no longer possible nor even reasonable,
according to the prediction of Burke,[70] “the laws have no other
guardian than terror, … and in perspective, from our point of view, we
see but scaffolds,” or courts-martial, which amount to the same thing.
IX.--CONSEQUENCES OF THE SECULARIZATION OF LAW.
How often do we not hear it said that almost all our misfortunes, and,
above all, our inability to repair our losses, come from the little
respect we have for the law! This statement, which has become almost
trite, indicates most frequently a strange wandering. After having
destroyed respect for persons, is it not absurd to claim it for their
works? But they have done more: they have denied the mission of a
legislator. The secularization of the law--that is to say, the denial of
a divine sanction applied to law--has no other meaning. Legislators being
no longer the mandataries of God, or not wishing to be such, now speak
only in virtue of their own lights, and have no real commission. By what
title, then, would you have us respect them? Every one is at liberty to
prefer his own lights and to believe that he would have done better.
I hear the reply: “It is to the interest of all that order should reign,
were it but materially, and the law is the principal means of maintaining
order.” You may hence conclude that it would be more advantageous to see
the laws obeyed; but a motive of interest is not a motive of respect, and
there is a certain class of individuals who may gain by the disorder. No,
you will have the right to claim respect for the law only when you shall
have rendered the law truly respectable; and to do this you must prove
that you have the mission to make the law, even were you the _élite_ of
our statesmen and doctors of the law, and much more if you are but a
collection of the most uncultivated tax-payers in the world.
Knowledge is something; it is something also to represent real and
considerable interests; and I do not deny the relative importance of
the elements of which legislative bodies are composed. But nothing of
all this can supply the place of a commission; and you will have that
only when you shall have consented, as legislators, to acknowledge the
existence of God, to submit yourselves to his laws, and to conform your
own thereto.
People have but a very inadequate idea of the disastrous consequences
which, one day or other, may ensue from the secularization of law. Until
now the only danger of which they have dreamed is that with which extreme
revolution menaces us.
This is a danger so imminent, so undisguised, that every one sees it; and
some have ended by understanding that without a return to God society is
destined to fall. Nay, more, the Assembly now sitting at Versailles has
made an act of faith by ordering public prayers; and this first step has
caused hope to revive in the hearts of men of good-will. But it is not,
perhaps, inopportune to draw the attention of serious men to another
phase of the question.
What would happen if modern law should go so far as to enjoin a crime
upon Christians? The hypothesis is not purely imaginary; and although,
happily, thanks to Heaven, it has not yet come to pass, there is a whole
party which threatens to reach this extreme. In other countries there has
been something like a beginning of its realization. I would like to speak
of the school law and the avowed project of imposing a compulsory and lay
education. We know what is meant by _lay_ in such a case; and experience
proves that the state schools are often entrusted to men whose avowed
intention is to bring up the children in infidelity. What would happen if
such a law were passed, which supposes that everywhere, at the same time,
parents would be compelled to put their children in imminent danger of
losing their faith? The Catholic Church is very explicit in her doctrine
on the obligation of obeying even a bad government; she orders that
useless, unjust, and even culpable laws be borne with, so long as this
can be done without exposing one’s self to commit a sin. Neither plunder
nor the danger of death excuses revolt in her eyes. But in this case do
we understand to what we would be reduced? To resist passively, and to
allow one’s self to be punished by fines, by prison, by torture, or by
death, would not remedy the evil; the soul of the child remains without
defence, and the father is responsible for it. This kind of persecution
is, then, more serious in its consequences, and may lead to deeper
troubles, than even the direct persecution, which might consist, for
example, in exacting apostasy from adults. In this last case the martyr
bears all, and the first Christians have shown us the way; but here the
torments of the parents cannot save the children, and the parents cannot
abandon them; whatever becomes of the body, the soul must be guarded
until death.
It belongs not to me to decide; for in this case, as in all those of a
similar kind, the line of conduct to be followed ought to be traced by
the only competent authority; but the problem is worth proposing, and by
it alone it is already easy to throw great light on the abysses to which
the atheism of the law is leading the people by rapid strides.
X.--CHRISTIAN DEFINITION OF NATURAL LAW.
It remains to explain in a few words the great principles which should
form the basis of law, and which were never completely ignored until
these days of aberration and wretchedness. I could not expect to give
here, in these few pages, a course of natural law, nor even to trace its
outline; but there are some perfectly incontestable truths which it is
very necessary to recall since people have forgotten them. When one has
no personal authority, he feels a certain timidity in broaching so grave
a subject, and in speaking of it as if he aspired to enlighten his kind;
and meanwhile error is insinuated, preached, disseminated, commanded,
with a skill so infernal and a success so great that ignorance of truth
is almost unbounded. Of such elementary rules we often find influential
persons, and sometimes persons of real merit, totally ignorant. In other
days they would have known them on leaving school, or even from their
catechism.
Let us go back, then, to the definition of the word nature, and it will
serve as a starting-point from which to treat of what the laws destined
to govern man should be.
The nature of a being is that which renders it capable of attaining its
end. This is true of a plant or an animal as well as of man; but there
are two kinds of ends subordinate one to the other. The end for which God
created the world could be no other than God himself.[71] The Creator
could only propose to himself an end worthy of himself, and, he alone
being perfect, he could not find outside himself an end proportioned to
his greatness. God is, then, the last end of all creatures. But there
are particular ends; and it is in their subordination that the order of
the world consists. The primary ends are, in a certain sense, but a means
for arriving at the last end.
But God being unable to add anything to his infinite perfection, the end
which he proposed to himself could not be to render himself more perfect;
hence he could seek only an exterior glory, which consists in manifesting
himself to his creatures. For this it was necessary that some of these
creatures should be capable of knowing him. These reasonable creatures
are superior to the others and are their primary end; therefore it is
that theologians call man a microcosm, a compendium of the universe, and
king of the world.
Man is placed in creation to admire it, and by means of it to render
homage to God; for, in his quality of a creature gifted with reason,
he knows his end, which is God, and the essential characteristic of
his nature is the ability to attain this end. He is, moreover, endowed
with an admirable prerogative--liberty, or free-will; that is to say,
he is called on to will this end; and God, in his infinite bounty, will
recompense him for having willed his own good. But man has need of an
effort to will good; for his primitive nature has been corrupted by the
original fall. He has, therefore, an inclination to evil, against which
he must incessantly struggle; and the greatest number of political and
social errors have their source in ignorance or forgetfulness of this
perversion of human nature.
This granted, the natural law comprises the obligations imposed on man in
order that he may reach his end, together with the prohibition of all
that could turn him away from it. This law obliges all men, even those
who have no knowledge of the positive divine law--that is to say, the
revealed law.
Behold how Gerson has defined it:
“The natural law is a sign imprinted upon the heart of every man enjoying
the right use of reason, and which makes known to him the divine will, in
virtue of which the human creature is required to do certain things and
to avoid certain others, in order to reach his end.” Among the precepts
which God has engraved upon the hearts of all men is found, in the first
rank, that which obliges them to refer themselves to God as to their last
end.
From this it follows that every law which tends to hinder or prevent the
progress of men toward God is a law against nature, and consequently null
(_lex injusta non est lex_); for no human law can change or abrogate the
natural law.
XI.--CONTINUATION: THE END OF SOCIETY ACCORDING TO THE NATURAL LAW.
The considerations of the preceding chapter have reference to man
considered abstractly from society. But man cannot exist alone. For life
and subsistence, during his early childhood, he has need of his kind; so
that, from the first moment of his existence, he forms part of a domestic
society--the family.
The family being certainly of divine institution, and the duties which
it imposes being of the number of those which the natural law commands,
we find therein the first elements of all society: authority, hierarchy,
consequently inequality, mutual love, and protection--in a word, varied
and reciprocal duties. But the family suffices not for man’s social
cravings. Man naturally longs after his like; he possesses the marvellous
gift of speech for communication with his fellows; he bears engraven on
his heart the first precept of his duty towards them: “Do unto others
that which you would have others do unto you; and do not unto them that
which you would not that they do to you.” The existence of society is,
therefore, still a law of nature.
Once formed, society itself has its duties; it has its proper end, which
not only should not be opposed to the end of man considered singly, but
should moreover contribute to facilitate the attainment of that end. The
end of man being God, and this end being attainable only by virtue, the
principal end of society will necessarily be to aid men in the practice
of virtue; and, that I may not be accused of depending exclusively on
theology, I will adduce what Aristotle has said on this subject: “The
most perfect state is evidently that in which each citizen, whoever he
may be, may, by favor of the laws, best practise virtue and be most
secure of happiness.”[72] And what is happiness, according to Aristotle?
“We consider it a point perfectly established that happiness is always
in proportion to wisdom; … [for] the soul, speaking absolutely and even
relatively to us, is more precious than wealth and the body.… Following
the laws of nature, all exterior goods are desirable only insomuch as
they serve the soul, and wise men should not desire them except for this
end; whereas the soul should never be placed in comparison with them.”[73]
We are assuredly far off from this pagan, and he goes still further
even than the foregoing; for he lays down as incontestable a principle
which is the formal condemnation of the secularization of the law. “The
elements of happiness,” says he, “are the same for the individual and
for the city.”[74] We have just seen what he understands by happiness;
but he adds, in order that he may be the better comprehended, that if
the felicity of the individual consisted in wealth, it would be the same
for the city. According to Aristotle, therefore, the moral law obliges
society as it does the individual. Now, it is precisely this which the
partisans of atheistical or merely secular law deny.
XII.--CHRISTIAN LAW.
I have designedly quoted the ancient philosophers, because certain
diseased minds who shrink from the authority of the sacred books accept
more willingly that of the learned; but I believe that from what precedes
one could easily infer the true rule of the relations between church and
state. I will not undertake it now; nevertheless, as I address myself,
by preference, to those who profess the same faith as myself, I will
take the liberty to point out to them some inevitable corollaries of the
principles I have just recalled.
The natural law, properly so called, has been confirmed and completed
by revelation. Although the precepts whose observance is indispensable
to man to reach his end are engraven in the depths of his heart, the
blindness and the evil propensities which are the consequences of his
fall render him but too forgetful of his duties. Besides, God, having
resolved to save man, chose to himself a privileged people, that from it
he might cause the Messias to be born; and for the accomplishment of his
merciful designs he guided this people and made it the guardian of his
law, even to the day on which the promises were fulfilled.
To this end God charged Moses with the promulgation of a positive
divine law which contained moral precepts--precepts relating to the
ceremonies of the ancient worship--and political precepts; that is to
say, precepts relating to the civil government of the Jewish people. The
last two classes of precepts no longer oblige; but those which concern
morals--that is to say, those of the Decalogue--retain all their force,
because they are the precepts of the natural law.
But it is no longer by virtue of the promulgation of Moses that we are
bound by the moral obligations contained in the old law. He who is our
Judge, our Legislator, our King,[75] has come himself to give us a more
perfect law: “Mandatum novum do vobis” (Joan. 13). According to the
expression of Suarez, Jesus Christ has made known more perfectly the
natural law in completing it by new precepts. Jesus Christ has done
still more: he has founded a new kingdom--the church, the mystical body,
of which he is the head. He has, therefore, appointed interpreters and
guardians of his law, who have the mission to proclaim it to those who
know it not; to pardon in his name those who, having violated it, confess
and repent; and, finally, to distribute the numberless succors of divine
grace--all which have for their object to help us to observe the law
as perfectly as possible, and consequently to enable us ourselves to
approach perfection. The new precepts added by Christ to those of the
natural law are those which enjoin upon us the use of the sacraments and
which determine their form; these articles of the new law--if we may be
allowed so to term them--are all as obligatory as those of the natural
law, because they have God himself for their author. Behold how S. Thomas
sums up the whole of the new law, or the law of grace, which Christ came
to bring us: “It comprises,” says he, “the precepts of the natural law,
the articles of faith, and the sacraments of grace.”
One of the most remarkable characteristics of the Christian law is that
it was not written. Jesus Christ _spoke_ his commandments, and, _his
word being divine_, it engraved them upon the hearts of his apostles and
disciples;[76] but the Incarnate Word had nothing written during the
time he spent upon earth. The first Gospel appeared at least eight years
after the death of Jesus Christ. If to this observation we add the common
belief of theologians, according to which it was only from the coming of
the Holy Ghost--that is to say, from the day of Pentecost and after the
Ascension--that the law of Christ became obligatory, we arrive at this
conclusion: that the means of oral teaching was expressly chosen by the
Word for the transmission of his law and his will.
Nothing throws greater light upon the sovereign importance of the church
and its hierarchy; nothing manifests better the extreme necessity of
a permanent infallibility residing somewhere in the mystical body of
Christ. The Council of the Vatican, conformably to the tradition of
all Christian ages, has _defined_ that “the Roman Pontiff enjoys the
plenitude of that infallibility with which it was necessary for the
church to be provided in defining doctrine touching faith or morals.”
These last words show that the Pope is the unfailing interpreter of
the natural law, and the judge, from whom there is no appeal of its
violations.
The decisions given by the Sovereign Pontiff upon human laws are not
recognized at the present day by the powers of the earth. But neither
is God recognized; and thus it is that, little by little violence has
overrun the world and law has vanished. Europe is returning to a worse
than primitive barbarism; and Catholics are no longer alone in saying it.
At the epoch at which the bishops were gathered together at Rome for the
last council, a publicist of great merit, an Englishman and a Protestant,
speaking in the name of his co-religionists, addressed an appeal to the
Pope entreating him to labor for the re-establishment of the rights of
the people.
The rights of the people, or the law of nature, said Mr. Urquhart,
is the Ten Commandments applied to society. After having cited Lord
Mansfield, who says that this right “is considered to form part of the
English law,” and that “_the acts_ of the government cannot alter it,”
Mr. Urquhart fears not to add “that it is against their governments that
nations should protect this right.” And why did this Protestant appeal
to Rome? Because, in sight of the unjust wars which ravage Europe, he
hoped that the Ecumenical Council “would lay down a rule enabling
Catholics to distinguish the just from the unjust; so that the Pope might
afterwards exercise juridical power over communities, nations, and their
sovereigns.”[77]
The rule exists; for the natural or divine law engraven by God from the
beginning upon the hearts of all men, and more expressly revealed in the
Decalogue, was the subject of the teaching of Christ. The juridical power
and the tribunal from which there is no appeal equally exist; but the
voice of the judge is no longer listened to by those who govern human
society. But it is not this which is important, and Mr. Urquhart is
right--it is the nations which should invoke against their new tyrants
the only efficacious protection; it is the people who should first bend
before the beneficent authority of the infallible master of the moral
law; there would then be no further need of the consent of governments.
XIII.--CONCLUSION.
I said, in beginning the last paragraph, that it was addressed to
Catholics by right of corollary from the preceding considerations. It is
certain, indeed, that if all Catholics were truly instructed and well
convinced of the truths that I have endeavored to set forth as briefly
and clearly as I could, a great step in the right path would already have
been taken.
But there is a much-used, widely-spread, and very convenient objection
which many excellent men fail not to proffer in such a case. “It is
true,” say they, “that if human discussions and quarrels could be
referred to the highest moral authority on earth, it would afford great
advantages; but this is not _practicable_. Times have changed, and it is
impossible to hope that this authority can ever recover the influence it
would require in order to act efficaciously.”
If good men adhere to the fatal habit they have acquired of renouncing
beforehand all effort, for fear it will not be successful, nothing can
be done; and there remains to us nothing but to veil our faces while
awaiting the destruction of our country and of all organized society. But
even were we reduced to despair, we never have the right of renouncing
our convictions nor of ceasing to act personally according to the
prescriptions of our faith. Before concerning ourselves about the doings
of others, and without needing to count on success, we must begin by
conforming ourselves to the teachings of truth, which is by its nature
unchangeable; for there is no progress or civilization which can alter
one iota of the divine laws.
Moreover, he is very bold who would dare to predict what Europe will or
will not be several years hence. Either it is condemned--and then, for
his own peace of mind, a man should allow himself to be guided by his
conscience with the full certainty of not doing wrong--or God wills to
save Europe still another time; and this can never be, save by truth.
With regard to practical means, of which they make so much at the present
day, I see no one who proposes them inspiring any confidence. Every one
hesitates, gropes, and most often acknowledges that he can only invent.
The present hour is favorable to good, in this sense: that the greater
number of _practical_ errors no longer exercise the same seduction as at
the beginning of the century.
Evil presses us on all sides, and, according to the expression of one
of our most distinguished publicists, “1789 has failed.”[78] After 1789
there is no middle way between social war and the return to good. We meet
at every step upright minds who break their idols; there are too many who
know not yet with what to replace them, but it is still much to have seen
one’s error.
Furthermore, there are untiring seekers, some of whom have found the
whole truth, and others who find but the fragments; all help to prepare
the way for the reconstruction of the social edifice. He to whom I have
dedicated this work[79] will pardon me, I hope, if I quote from him. I
do not believe that there is another example of an equal influence so
rapidly exercised by a book so serious, so grave in matter, so little
attractive to the frivolous reader, as that which he has written upon
_Social Reform_. To rediscover social truth by the method of observation
and analysis was already a phenomenon which I consider unique of its
kind; to cause it to be adopted by so great a number of minds biassed
and filled with hostile prejudices, and most frequently badly prepared
by their previous studies, is a fact still more astonishing. Thus, as I
said in my dedicatory epistle, it is impossible for me not to see herein
one of the most consoling signs of our age. The scientific processes of
M. Le Play were, perhaps, the only ones which would find favor with a
generation so dialectical and so enamored with the exact sciences as ours.
Notwithstanding the sorrows which oppress us, we must not despair; and,
above all, we must not trouble ourselves too much concerning the errors
of what people agree to call public opinion.
The errors regarding the general will reproduce themselves, under another
form, in the uneasiness which this self-styled queen of the world instils
into the minds of men of good-will. If we consider closely what the
elements of opinion are, we very quickly perceive that, in general, it
merits the name of public only because it proclaims itself very loudly
and makes itself known in all the public squares. In reality, a party
much less considerable than we suppose announces to the world, and
imagines, most frequently in good faith, that it alone is enlightened.
Its boldness inspires awe, and by degrees those who compose it succeed
in persuading the multitude, and in persuading themselves that they
represent the only _opinion_ worthy of note. And who are these?
Financiers and journalists who carry on business in common; loud-voiced
lawyers; professors much tainted themselves; officers occupying
a position, and others wishing to obtain one from them; the idle
pleasure-seeking men and women. Is it, then, true that these represent
the nation?
Eager for their own interest or for that of others, these pretended
echoes of public opinion are wont to say “The people believe, the people
wish, the people will never consent, it does not suit the people, etc.
What a pity! The people are nothing in revolutions in which they are
but passive instruments. France no longer ardently desires anything
except repose. At first sight this proposition would seem true--the
previous consent of the French is necessary for the re-establishment
of the monarchy. Nothing is more false. The multitude never obtains
what it wills; it always accepts, it never chooses. We may even notice
an _affectation_ of Providence (if I may be allowed the expression),
inasmuch as the efforts of the people to attain an object are the very
means which it makes use of to withdraw them from it.
“In the French Revolution the people were constantly chained, outraged,
ruined, torn by factions; and the factions, in their turn, the sport of
one another, constantly drifted (notwithstanding all their efforts), only
to be dashed against the rock which awaited them.… In the establishment
and the overthrow of sovereignties … the mass of the people enter only as
the wood and the cord employed by a machinist. Their chiefs even are such
only to strangers; in reality, they are led as they lead the people. When
the proper moment shall arrive, the Supreme Ruler of empires will chase
away these noisy insects. Then we shall be astonished at the profound
nothingness of these men.
“Do people imagine that the political world goes on by chance, and
that it is not organized, directed, animated, by the same wisdom which
shines in the physical world? Great malefactors who overthrow the state
necessarily produce melancholy, internal dismemberments … but when man
labors to re-establish order, he associates himself with the Author of
order, he is favored by nature--that is to say, by the aggregate of
secondary causes which are the instruments of the Divinity. His action
has something divine; it is at once gentle and powerful; it forces
nothing and nothing resists it.”[80]
These beautiful words are as true to-day as in 1797.
DURATION.
II
All change implies succession. Hence the duration of contingent beings,
inasmuch as they are subject to actual change, involves succession. The
duration of the changes brought about by purely spiritual operations
transcends our experience; for we are not pure spirits. Hence we have
no means of measuring such changes by their intrinsic measure. But the
duration of the changes which occur in the material world through local
movements lies within the range of our apprehensive faculty, and can be
measured by us; for we find in nature many movements which, by their
constant recurrence and their uniformity, are calculated to serve as
terms of comparison for measuring the length of successive duration.
_Definitions of time._--The duration of local movement, which we measure
by a given standard, is called “time.” And therefore time may be properly
and adequately defined as the duration of local movement: _Duratio
motus_. From this definition it immediately follows that where there is
no movement there can be no time. Accordingly, there was no time before
creation, as there was no movement. It follows also that the duration of
created things, inasmuch as it expresses the permanence of those things
in their own being, is not time; for it is of the essence of time to be
successive, and there is no succession where there is no change, and
no change without movement. Hence, when we say that contingent beings
exist in time, we do not refer to their essence or substance as such,
but to their successive modes of being, by which their duration acquires
its accidental successivity. Were the whole world reduced to perfect
stillness by impeding or suspending the actions and movements of all
creatures, time would at the same instant cease to flow; for time is not
the duration of things, but the duration of movement.
Time may be considered either as a _relation_ or as a _quantity_.
In fact, intervals of successive duration are, like distances, real
relations; but when we think of the greater or less extent of space
which can be measured with a given velocity between two correlated terms
of time, these same intervals exhibit themselves under the form of
continuous quantities.
Time, as a relation, is defined by S. Thomas and by all the ancients
as _Ratio prioris et posterioris motus_--that is, as the link between
the “before” and the “after” of any movement; and, as a quantity, it
is defined as _Numerus motus_--that is, as a number arising from the
mensuration of the movement. This movement is always local, as we have
already intimated; for we cannot measure successive duration by any other
kind of movement. Hence it is that the duration which is predicated of
spiritual substances and of their operations differs in kind from our
time. For, since such substances are not subjected to local movements,
their duration cannot be measured in terms of space and velocity, as our
time, but only in terms of intellectual movements, which have nothing
common with the periodical revolutions from which we desume the measure
of our days, years, and centuries. When we say that angels have existed
for centuries, we measure the duration of their existence by a measure
which is altogether extrinsic to them; and in the same manner we measure
the duration of our own intellectual operations by a measure extrinsic
to them--that is, by comparing it with the duration of some movement
occurring in our bodies or in the surrounding world.
Since time is the duration of movement, it is plain that when we perceive
movement we immediately perceive time; and since movement implies a
continuous change, it is plain also that the greater the number of
changes we can distinctly perceive in a given succession, the better
we realize the flowing of time. It is for this reason that time seems
longer in sickness or in a sleepless night than in good health and
in a pleasurable occupation; for gladness and amusement distract our
minds, and do not allow us to reflect enough on what is going on around
us; whilst anything which affects us painfully calls our attention to
ourselves and to our sensations, and thus causes us to reflect on a
great number of movements to which in other circumstances we would pay
no attention at all. It is for this reason, also, that when we are fast
asleep we have no perception of the flowing of time. The moment one falls
asleep he ceases to perceive the succession of changes, both interior
and exterior, from the consideration of which time should be estimated;
hence, when he awakes, he instinctively unites the present _now_ with
that in which he fell asleep, as if there had been no intermediate time.
Thus, in the same manner as there is no time without movement, there is
no actual perception of time without the actual perception of movement.
_Measure of time._--We have said that time, as a quantity, is measured
by movement. The sense of this proposition is that a body moving with
uniform velocity describes spaces proportional to the times employed;
and therefore, if we assume as a unit of measure the time employed in
describing a certain unit of space with a given velocity, the duration
of the movement will contain as many units of time as there are units of
space measured by that velocity. Thus, if the revolution of the earth
around its axis is taken as the unit of movement, and its duration, or
the day, as the unit of time, the number of days will increase at the
same rate as the number of revolutions. Speaking in general, if the time
employed in describing uniformly a space _v_ be taken as a unit of time,
and _t_ be the time employed in describing uniformly a space _s_ with the
same constant velocity, we have the proportion--
_s_:_v_::_t_:1.
The unit of time is necessarily arbitrary or conventional. For there is
no natural unit of measure in continuous quantities whose divisibility
has no end, as we have explained in a preceding article.
The space _v_ uniformly described in the unit of time represents the
velocity of the movement; and therefore the duration of the movement
comprises as many units of time as there are units in the ratio of the
space to the constant velocity with which it is measured. In other
terms, time is the ratio of the space described to the velocity with
which it is described.
We often hear it said that as time is measured by movement, so also
movement is measured by time. But this needs explanation. When we say
that time is measured by movement, we mean that time is represented by
the ratio of the space to the velocity with which it is described, or
by the ratio of the material extension to the formal extending of the
movement; for the proportion above deduced gives
_t_ = _s_/_v_,
where _s_ represents the length of the movement in space (which length
is its material constituent) and _v_ represents its intensity (which is
its formal constituent). On the other hand, when we say that movement
is measured by time, we either mean that the ratio of the space to the
velocity is represented by the time employed in the movement, and thus
we merely interchange the members of our equation, by which no new
conclusion can be reached; or we mean that the length and the velocity of
the movement are measured by time. But this cannot be; for our equation
gives for the length of the movement
_s_ = _vt_;
and this shows that time alone cannot measure the length of the space
described. On the other hand, the same equation gives for the velocity
_v_ = _s_/_t_;
and this shows that time is not the measure of velocity, as the one
diminishes when the other increases.
This suffices to show that the phrase “movement is measured by time”
must be interpreted in a very limited sense, as simply meaning that
between movement and time there is a necessary connection, and that, all
other things remaining equal, the length of the movement is proportional
to the length of the time employed. Yet this does not mean that the
length of the movement depends entirely on the time employed, for the
same length may be described in different times; but it means that the
time employed depends on the material and formal extent of the movement,
as above explained; for, according as we take different velocities,
different lengths will be described in equal time, and equal lengths in
different times. It is not the time that extends the movement, but it is
the movement that by its extension extends its own time.
The true measure of movement is its velocity; for the measure of any
given quantity is a unit of the same kind, and velocity is the unit of
movement. Time, as measured by us, is a number which arises from the
mensuration of the movement by its velocity; and therefore time results
from the movement as already measured. This shows again that time is not
the measure of the _extent_ of the movement. We have seen, also, that
time is not the measure of the _intensity_ of the movement. It follows,
therefore, that the quantity of movement is not measured by time.
Time, being the ratio of two quantities mathematically homogeneous, is
represented by an _abstract_ number. Yet the same time may be expressed
by different numbers, according as we measure it by different units, as
days, hours, minutes, etc. These numbers, however, are only virtually
discrete, as time cannot be discontinued.
Balmes from the equation
_v_ = _s_/_t_
deduces the consequence that “the velocity is essentially a relation; for
it cannot be otherwise expressed than by the ratio of the space to the
time.”[81] We think that this conclusion is faulty. Space and time are
not homogeneous quantities; hence the mathematical ratio of space to time
is not an abstract but a concrete number, and therefore it represents an
absolute quantity. Space divided by time is a length divided into equal
parts; hence the quotient--viz., the velocity--represents the length
of the movement made in the unit of time. And since Balmes admits that
the length of the movement is a quantity having a determinate value, we
do not see how he can escape the consequence that velocity, too, is a
quantity of the same kind, and not a mere relation. “In the expression
of velocity,” says Balmes, “two terms enter--space and time. Viewing the
former in the real order, abstraction made of that of phenomena, we more
easily come to regard it as something fixed; and we comprehend it in a
given case without any relation. A foot is at all times a foot, and a
yard a yard. These are quantities existing in reality, and if we refer
them to other quantities it is only to make sure that they are so, not
because their reality depends upon the relation. A cubic foot of water is
not a cubic foot because the measure so says, but, on the contrary, the
measure so says because there is a cubic foot. The measure itself is also
an absolute quantity; and in general all extensions are absolute, for
otherwise we should be obliged to seek measure of measure, and so on to
infinity” (loc. cit.) This passage shows that a length described in space
is, according to Balmes, an absolute quantity. And since the mathematical
value of velocity represents a length described in space, as we have just
proved, it follows that velocity has an absolute value.
But leaving aside all mathematical considerations, we may show that
velocity has an absolute value by reference to metaphysical data.
What is velocity but the development in extension of the intensity of
the momentum impressed on a material point? Now, the intensity of the
momentum is an absolute quantity, equal to the quantity of the action
by which it is produced. Hence it is evident that, as the action has an
absolute value, greater or less, according to circumstances, so also the
momentum impressed has an absolute value; and consequently the velocity
also, which is nothing else than the momentum itself as developing its
intensity into extension, has an absolute value, and is an absolute
quantity.
Balmes thought the contrary, for the following reason: “If the
denominator, in the expression of velocity, were a quantity of the
same kind as space--that is, having determinate values, existing and
conceivable by themselves alone--the velocity, although still a relation
might also have determinate values, not indeed wholly absolute, but only
in the supposition that the two terms _s_ and _t_, having fixed values,
are compared.… But from the difficulties which we have, on the one hand,
seen presented to the consideration of time as an absolute thing, and
from the fact that, on the other hand, no solid proof can be adduced to
show such a property to have any foundation, it follows that we know not
how to consider velocity as absolute, even in the sense above explained”
(loc. cit.)
This reason proves the contrary of what the author intends to establish.
In fact, if the denominator were of the same kind as the numerator,
the quotient would be an abstract number, as we know from mathematics;
and such a number would exhibit nothing more than the relation of the
two homogeneous terms--that is, how many times the one is contained in
the other. It is precisely because the denominator is not of the same
kind as the numerator that the quotient must be of the same kind as the
numerator. And since the numerator represents space, which, according to
Balmes, is an absolute quantity, it follows that the quotient--that is,
the number by which we express the velocity--exhibits a quantity of the
same nature: a conclusion in which all mathematicians agree. When a man
walks a mile, with the velocity of one yard per second, he measures the
whole mile yard by yard, with his velocity. If the velocity were not a
quantity of the same kind with the space measured, how could it measure
it?
True it is that velocity, when considered in its metaphysical aspect,
is not a length of space, but the intensity of the act by which
matter is carried through such a length. Yet, since Balmes argues
here from a mathematical equation, we must surmise or presume that he
considers velocity as a length measured in space in the unit of time,
as mathematicians consider it; for he cannot argue from mathematical
expressions with logical consistency, if he puts upon them construction
of an unmathematical character. After all, it remains true that the
velocity or intensity of the movement is always to be measured by the
extension of the movement in the unit of time; and thus it is necessary
to admit that velocity exhibits an absolute intensive quantity measured
by the extension which it evolves.
We therefore “know how to consider velocity as absolute,” though its
mathematical expression is drawn from a relation of space to time. The
measure of any quantity is always found by comparing the quantity with
some unit of measure; hence all quantity, inasmuch as measured, exhibits
itself under a relative form as _ratio mensurati ad suam mensuram_; and
it is only under such a form that it can be expressed in numbers. But
this relativity does not constitute the nature of quantity, because it
presupposes it, and has the whole reason of its being in the process of
mensuration.
We have insisted on this point because the confusion of the absolute
value of velocity with its relative mathematical expression would lead
us into a labyrinth of difficulties with regard to time. Balmes, having
overlooked the distinction between the mathematical expression and the
metaphysical character of velocity, comes to the striking consequence
that “if the whole machine of the universe, not excluding the operations
of our soul, were accelerated or retarded, an impossibility would be
realized; for the relation of the terms would have to be changed without
undergoing any change. If the velocity be only the relation of space to
time, and time only the relation of spaces traversed, it is the same
thing to change them all in the same proportion, and not to change them
at all. It is to leave every thing as it is” (loc. cit.) The author is
quite mistaken. The very equation
_t_ = _s_/_v_,
on which he grounds his argument, suffices to show that if the velocity
increases, the time employed in measuring the space _s_ diminishes; and
if the velocity diminishes, the time increases. This being the case, it
is evident that an acceleration of the movements in the whole machine of
the universe would be a _real_ acceleration, since the same movements
would be performed in less time; and a retardation would be a _real_
retardation, since the same movements would require more time. We are
therefore far from realizing an impossibility when we admit that, in the
hypothesis of the author, time would vary in the inverse ratio of the
velocity of the universal movement.
_Division of time._--Philosophers divide time into _real_ and
_imaginary_. We have already explained this division when speaking of
flowing duration. The reality of time evidently depends on the reality
of movement; hence any time to which no real movement corresponds is
imaginary. Thus if you dream that you are running, the time of your
running is imaginary, because your running, too, is imaginary. In such
a case the real time corresponds to your real movements--say, to your
breathing, pulse, etc.--while the dream continues.
Imaginary time is often called also _ideal_ time, but this last epithet
is not correct; for, as time is the duration of local movement, it is
in the nature of time to be an object of the imagination. And for this
reason the duration of the intellectual movements and operations of pure
spirits is called time only by analogy, as we have above stated. However,
we are wont to think of such a duration as if it were homogeneous with
our own time; for we cannot measure it except by reference to the
duration of the movements we witness in the material world.
Time is also divided into _past_, _present_, and _future_. The past
corresponds to a movement already made, the future to a movement which
will be made, and the present to a movement which is actually going
on. But some will ask: Is there really any present time? Does not the
_now_, to which the present is confined, exclude all _before_ and all
_after_, and therefore all succession, without which it is impossible to
conceive time? We concede that the _now_, as such--that is, considered
in its absolute reality--is not time, just as a point is not a line;
for, as the point has no length, so the _now_ has no extension. Yet, as
a point in motion describes a line, so also the _now_, by its flowing
from _before_ to _after_, extends time. Hence, although the _now_, as
such, is not time, its flowing from _before_ to _after_ is time. If,
then, we consider the present as the link of the immediate past with the
immediate future--that is, if we consider the _now_ not statically, but
dynamically--we shall see at once that its actual flowing from _before_
to _after_ implies succession, and constitutes an infinitesimal interval
of time.
This may also be shown by reference to the nature of uniform local
movement. When a material point describes a line with uniform velocity,
its movement being continuous, its duration is continuous; and therefore
every flowing instant of its duration is continuous, as no discontinuous
parts can ever be reached in the division of continuum. Hence every
flowing instant has still the nature of time. This conclusion is
mathematically evident from the equation
_t_ = _s_/_v_,
for, _v_ being supposed constant, we cannot assume _t_ = 0 unless we also
assume _s_ = 0. But this latter assumption would imply rest instead of
movement, and therefore it is out of the question. Accordingly, at no
instant of the movement can we assume _t_ = 0; or, which is the same,
every flowing instant partakes the nature of time.
The same conclusion can be established, even more evidently, by the
consideration of accelerated or retarded movements. When a stone is
thrown upwards, the velocity of its ascent suffers a _continuous_
diminution till at last it becomes = 0; and at the very instant it
becomes = 0 an opposite velocity begins to urge the stone down, and
increases continually so long as the stone does not reach the ground
or any other obstacle. Now, a continuous increase or decrease of the
velocity means that there are not two consecutive moments of time in
which the stone moves at exactly the same rate; and hence nothing but
an instant corresponds to each successive degree of velocity. But
since the duration of the movement is made up of nothing but such
instants, it is clear that the succession of such instants constitutes
time; and consequently, as time is continuous, those instants, though
infinitesimal, are themselves continuous; and thus every flowing instant
is really time.
From this it is plain, first, that although the _now_, as such, is not
time, yet its actual flowing is time.
Secondly, it follows that infinitesimals of time, as employed in
dynamics, are not mathematical figments, but realities, for time flows
only through infinitesimal instants; and therefore to deny the reality of
such infinitesimals would be to deny the reality of time.
Thirdly, we gather that the absolute _now_ differs from an actual
infinitesimal of time; because the former, as such, is only a term of
time, whereas the latter is the flowing of that term from its immediate
_before_ to its immediate _after_. Hence an infinitesimal of time is
infinitely less than any designable duration. In fact, its _before_ and
its _after_ are so immediately connected with the same absolute _now_
that there is no room for any designable length of duration between them.
Fourthly, whilst the absolute _now_ is no quantity, the infinitesimal of
time is a real quantity; for it implies real succession. This quantity,
however, is nascent, or _in fieri_ only; for the _now_, which alone is
intercepted between the immediate _before_ and the immediate _after_, has
no formal extension.
Fifthly, the infinitesimal of time corresponds to a movement by which
an infinitesimal of space is described. And thus infinitesimals of
space, as considered in dynamics, are real quantities. To deny that such
infinitesimals are real quantities would be the same, in fact, as to
deny the real extension of local movement; for this movement flows and
acquires its extension through such infinitesimals only. And the same is
true of the infinitesimal actions by which the rate of local movement
is continually modified. These latter infinitesimals are evidently real
quantities, though infinitely less than any designable quantity. They
have an infinitesimal intensity, and they cause an infinitesimal change
in the rate of the movement in an infinitesimal of time.
_Evolution of time._--The preceding considerations lead us to understand
how it is that in any interval of time there is but one absolute _now_
always the same _secundum rem_, but changing, and therefore manifold
_secundum rationem_. S. Thomas, in his opuscule _De Instantibus_, c. ii.,
explains this truth in the following words: “As a point to the line,
so is the _now_ to the time. If we imagine a point at rest, we shall
not be able to find in it the causality of any line; but if we imagine
that point to be in movement, then, although it has no dimensions, and
consequently no divisibility in itself, it will nevertheless, from the
nature of its movement, mark out a divisible line.… The point, however,
does in no way belong to the essence of the line; for one and the
same real term, absolutely indivisible, cannot be at the same time in
different parts of the same permanent continuum.… Hence the mathematical
point which by its movement draws a line is neither the line nor any
part of the line; but, remaining one and the same in itself, it acquires
different modes of being. These different modes of being, which must
be traced to its movement, are really in the line, whilst the point,
as such, has no place in it. In the same manner, an instant, which is
the measure of a thing movable, and adheres to it permanently, is one
and the same as to its absolute reality so long as the substance of the
thing remains unimpaired, for the instant is the inseparable measure
of its being; but the same instant becomes manifold inasmuch as it is
diversified by its modes of being; and it is this its diversity that
constitutes the essence of time.”[82]
From this explanation we may infer that, as each point, or primitive
element, of matter has its own _now_, one in its absolute reality,
but manifold in its mode of being, there are in nature as many _nows_
describing distinct lines of time as there are material points in
movement. Accordingly, there are as many particular times as there are
elements moving in space. The proposition that in time there is only
_unum instans in re_ is, therefore, to be limited to the particular
time of one and the same subject of motion. S. Thomas did not think of
this limitation, because he believed, according to the old astronomical
theory, that the movement of the _primum mobile_--that is, of the supreme
sphere--was the natural measure of time; and for this reason he thought
that, as the first movement was one, time also was one, and constituted
the common measure of all simultaneous movements.[83] But the truth is
that there must be as many distinct particular times as there are things
actually moving. This is a manifest consequence of the doctrine which
assimilates a flowing _now_ to a point describing a line. For as every
point in movement describes a distinct line in space, so also must the
absolute _now_ of every distinct being describe by its flowing a distinct
line of time.
The general time, which we regard as _one_ successive duration, is the
duration of the movement from the beginning of the world to our day,
conceived in the abstract--that is, without reference to the particular
beings concerned in the movement. Time, when thus conceived, is a mere
abstraction; whereas the particular times of particular movements are
concrete in their continuous extension, notwithstanding their being
represented by abstract numbers. If we knew of any special body created
and put in movement before any other body, we might regard it as _primum
mobile_, and take its movement, if uniform, as the natural measure or
standard of general time; but as we know of no such particular body, and
as we have reason to believe that the creation of all matter was made
in one and the same moment, we are led to admit an exceedingly great
multitude of _prima mobilia_, every one of which was from the beginning
of time the subject of duration. It is clear that we cannot reduce their
distinct durations to one general duration, except by making abstraction
of all particular subjects, and considering movement in the abstract.
Nevertheless, as we inhabit the earth, we usually restrict our
consideration of time to those periodical intervals of duration which
correspond to the periodical movements we witness in, or from, our
planet; and thus we take the duration of the diurnal or of the orbital
movement of the earth as our standard for the measure of time. If other
planets are inhabited by rational beings, it is obvious that their
time will be measured by other standards, as their diurnal and orbital
movements differ from those of our earth.
To the doctrine that time is evolved by the flowing of a single instant,
S. Thomas adds an important remark to the effect that the _now_ of
contingent things should not be confounded with the _now_ of eternity. He
proposes to himself the following objection: “To stand and to move are
not essential differences, but only different manners of being. But the
_now_ of eternity is standing, and the _now_ of time is moving. The one,
therefore, seems to differ from the other in nothing but in the manner
of being. Hence the _now_ of time would be substantially the same as the
_now_ of eternity, which is absurd.”[84]
S. Thomas replies: “This cannot be true, according to our doctrine; for
we have seen that eternity and time differ essentially. Moreover, when
of two things the one depends on the other as an effect from a cause,
the two things essentially differ; but the _now_ of eternity (which does
not really differ from eternity itself) is the cause of time and of the
_now_ of time; therefore the _now_ of time and the _now_ of eternity are
essentially different. Furthermore, the _now_ of time unites the past
with the future, which the _now_ of eternity does not do; for in eternity
there is no past and no future, because eternity is all together. Nor
has the objection any force. That to stand and to move do not constitute
an essential difference is true of those things which are liable both
to stand and to move; but that which always stands without possibility
of moving differs essentially from that which always moves without the
possibility of standing. And this is the case with the _now_ of eternity
on the one hand, and the _now_ of time on the other.”[85]
_Beginning of time._--Here the question arises whether time must have had
a beginning. Those who believe that the world could have been created _ab
æterno_ will answer that time could have existed without a beginning. But
we are convinced that the world could not be created _ab æterno_; and
therefore we maintain that time must have begun.
Our argument is drawn from the contingency of all things created.
The duration of a contingent being cannot be without a beginning; for
the contingent being itself must have had a beginning. In fact, as that
cannot be annihilated which has never been in existence, so that cannot
be educed from nothing which has never been nothing. It is therefore
necessary to admit that every creature had a beginning of its existence,
and consequently of its duration also; for nothing endures but inasmuch
as it exists.
Nor can this argument be evaded by saying that a contingent being
may have _initium naturæ_, without having _initium temporis_. This
distinction, though suggested and employed by S. Thomas, has no
foundation, because the beginning of the created nature is the beginning
also of its duration; and he who concedes that there must be an _initium
naturæ_ cannot consistently deny the _initium temporis_. In fact, no
contingent being can be said to have been created, if there was no
instant in which it was created; in other terms, every creature must be
traced to the _now_ of its creation. But the _now_ of its creation is
the beginning of its duration no less than of its existence. Surely,
whatever has a first _now_ has a beginning of duration; but every
creature has its first _now_--viz., the _now_ of its creation; therefore
every creature has a beginning of duration. That the _now_ of creation is
the first _now_ is self-evident; for the _now_ of creation is that point
of duration in which the passage is made from not being to being; and
therefore it marks the beginning of the existence of the created being.
And since we cannot say that the duration of the created being preceded
its existence, we are bound to conclude that the _now_ of its creation is
the beginning of its duration as well as of its existence.
Some will object that we assume what is to be proved--viz., the very
_now_ of creation. For, if the world had been created _ab æterno_, no
_now_ of creation could be pointed out. To this we answer that the
_now_ of creation, whether we can point it out determinately or not,
must always be admitted. To suppress it, is to suppress creation. For,
if we assume that a thing had no _now_ of creation, we are compelled
to deny that such a thing has ever been created. In other terms, if
anything has no beginning of duration, it was always in act, it never
lacked actual existence, and it never passed from non-existence to actual
existence--that is, it is no creature at all; for to be a creature is
to have passed from non-existence to actual existence. And thus we must
conclude that to create is to make a beginning of time.
The impossibility of a world created _ab æterno_ has also been argued
from the impossibility of an infinite ascending series. The force of this
proof does not, however, lie in the absurdity of an infinite series--for
such an absurdity, as S. Thomas remarks, has never been demonstrated--but
it lies in the necessity of granting a beginning to every term of the
series itself; for, if every term of the series has a beginning, the
whole series must have a beginning. S. Thomas, as we have just stated,
teaches that an infinite ascending series is not to be judged impossible,
“even if it were a series of efficient causes,” provided it depend on
an extrinsic cause: _In infinitum procedere in causis agentibus non
reputatur impossibile._[86] This doctrine is universally rejected,
and was fiercely attacked even in the time of the holy doctor; but he
persisted in maintaining it against all, and wrote a special treatise
to defend it _contra murmurantes_. The reason why S. Thomas embraced
this doctrine seems to have been that the creation of the world in the
beginning of time was an article of faith; and the saint believed that
articles of faith are proved only by authority, and not by natural
reason. He was therefore obliged to maintain that the beginning of time
could not be demonstrated by reason alone. “The newness of the world,”
says he, “cannot be demonstrated from the consideration of the world
itself, because the principle of demonstration is the quiddity of things.
Now, things, when considered as to their quiddity or species, do not
involve the _hic et nunc_; and for this reason the universals are said to
be everywhere and in all time. Hence it cannot be demonstrated that man
or any other thing did not always exist.”[87]
To this argument we respectfully reply that, when the necessary
conditions of a contingent fact are to be demonstrated, the principle
of demonstration is not the abstract quiddity, or intelligible essence,
of the things, but the contingency of their actual existence. But it is
evident that whatever exists contingently has been educed out of nothing.
It is therefore necessary to conclude that all contingent things have had
a first moment of existence and of duration.
The Angelic Doctor refers also to a similitude by which some philosophers
mentioned by S. Augustine undertook to explain the creation _ab æterno_.
If a foot had been _ab æterno_ pressed on the dust, the impression made
by it would be _ab æterno_. In the same manner the world might have been
_ab æterno_: for God, its maker, is eternal.[88] But we humbly reply
that the impression of the foot on the dust cannot be _ab æterno_ if it
is contingent. For, if it is contingent, it has necessarily a beginning
of its existence, and therefore of its duration also, as we have already
shown. Whatever is made has a beginning of duration. Hence the fathers
of the church, to prove that the divine Word was not made, thought it
sufficient to point out the fact that he was _ab æterno_ like his Father.
S. Thomas, after stating his conclusion that the temporal beginning of
the world is not demonstrable, but simply credible, remarks as follows:
“And this should be kept in mind, lest, by presuming to demonstrate
what is matter of faith by insufficient proofs, we be laughed at by the
infidels, who may think that on the strength of such proofs we believe
our articles of faith.”[89] This advice is good. But we need not tell
our readers that what we hold as of faith we hold on divine authority,
irrespective of our philosophical reasons.
_Perpetuity of time._--That time may go on without end is an evident
truth. But will it go on for ever, or will it cease at last? To this
question we answer that time will for ever continue. As long as there
will be movement there will be time. There will ever be movement;
therefore there will ever be time. The major of this syllogism needs no
explanation; for time is nothing but the duration of movement. The minor
is quite certain. For not only the rational creatures, but the earth
itself and other corporeal things, will last for ever, as is the common
doctrine of philosophers, who hold that God will never destroy what he
has created. These material things will therefore continue to celebrate
God’s glory for ever--that is, will continue to exert their motive power
and to bring about divers movements; for such is their nature, and such
their manner of chanting the praises of their Creator. Moreover, we know
by faith that we shall rise from death and live for ever, and that the
glorious bodies of the saints will possess, besides other privileges, the
gift of agility, which would evidently be of no use if there were to be
no local movement and no succession of time. Hence it follows that time
will last for ever.
And let no one say that the Sacred Scriptures teach the contrary. For
wherever the Sacred Scriptures mention _the end of time_, they speak, not
absolutely and universally, but only with reference to certain particular
periods or epochs of time characterized by some special events or
manifestation of divine Providence. Thus we read in the Apocalypse that
“there will be time no more”--_Tempus non erit amplius_--and yet we find
that after the end of that time there will be a thousand years; which
shows that the phrase “there will be time no more” refers to the time
of mercy and conversion. Thus also we read in Daniel that “time has its
end”--_Quoniam habet tempus finem suum_--but we see by the context that
he speaks there of the Antichristian epoch, which of course must have an
end. And the like is to be said of other similar passages.
The most we can admit in regard to the cessation of time is that, owing
to the great catastrophe and the wonderful changes which the consummation
of the present epoch shall bring about, the diurnal and the annual
revolutions, which serve now as measures of time, may be so modified as
to give rise to a new order of things, in which time shall be measured by
a different standard. This seems to be the opinion of many interpreters
of the Sacred Scriptures; though some of them speak as if after the
consummation of the present things there were to be time no more, but
only eternity. This manner of speaking, however, is no proof against
the continuance of time; for the word “eternity,” when applied to the
duration of creatures, means nothing else than sempiternity--that is,
time without end, according to the scriptural phrase: _Annos æternos in
mente habui_. We learn from S. Thomas that the word “eternity” is used
in three different senses: First, we call eternity the measure of the
duration of a thing which is always invariably the same, which acquires
nothing from the future, and loses nothing from the past. And this
is the most proper meaning of the word “eternity.” Secondly, we call
eternity the measure of the duration of a thing which has a fixed and
perpetual being, which, however, is subject to accidental changes in its
operations. Eternity, when thus interpreted, means what we should call
_ævum_ properly; for the _ævum_ is the measure of those things whose
being lasts for ever, but which admit of succession in their operations,
as is the case with pure intelligences. Thirdly, we call eternity the
measure of a successive duration, which has _before_ and _after_ without
beginning and without end, or simply without end, though it have a
beginning; and in this sense the world has been said to be eternal,
although it is really temporal. This is the most improper meaning of the
word “eternity”; for the true concept of eternity excludes _before_ and
_after_.[90] Thus far S. Thomas.
We may be allowed to remark on this passage that, according to the
principles which we have established in our articles on _Substantial
Generations_,[91] not only the pure intelligences, but all primitive
and elementary substances are substantially incorruptible, and have
a fixed and permanent being. Hence the distinction made by the holy
doctor between _ævum_ and endless time ceases to have a foundation, and
the whole difference between the endless duration of spiritual and of
material changes will be reduced to this: that the movements of spiritual
substances are intellectual, whereas those of the material elements are
local.
_The phrase “before creation.”_--We often hear of such expressions
as these: “Before creation there was God alone,” “Before creation
there was no time,” etc.; and since such expressions seem to involve
a contradiction in terms, we think it will not be superfluous to give
their rational explanation. Of course, if the words “before creation”
be understood absolutely--that is, excluding any creation either made
or imagined--those words will be contradictory. For the preposition
_before_ is relative, and implies succession; and it is contradictory
to suppose succession without anything capable of succession. When no
creature existed there could be nothing flowing from _before_ to _after_,
because there was no movement, there being nothing movable.
Nor can it be said that the _now_ of divine eternity gives us a
sufficient ground for imagining any _before_ and _after_ without
referring to something exterior to God himself. The _now_ of eternity
has in itself neither _before_ nor _after_; and when we say that it is
equivalent to all imaginable time, we do not affirm that it implies
succession, but only acknowledge that it is the supreme reason of the
possibility of succession in created things. Hence, when we use the
phrase “Before creation” in an absolute sense, we in fact take away all
real _before_ and all real _after_; and thus the words “Before creation,”
taken absolutely, involve a contradiction. They affirm explicitly what
they implicitly deny.
The truth is that, when we use the phrase in question, we express what
is in our imagination, and not in our intellect. We imagine that before
time there was eternity because we cannot picture to ourselves eternity,
except by the phantasm of infinite time. It is for this reason that in
speaking of eternity we use the terms by which we are accustomed to
express the relations of time. The words “Before creation” are therefore
to be understood of a time which was possible in connection with some
possible anterior creation, but which has never existed. This amounts to
saying that the _before_ which we conceive has no existence except in our
imagination.
S. Thomas proposes to himself the question whether, when we say that
God was before the world, the term “before” is to be interpreted of a
priority of nature or of a priority of duration. It might seem, says
he, that neither interpretation is admissible. For if God is before the
world only by priority of nature, then it follows that, since God is _ab
æterno_, the world too is _ab æterno_. If, on the contrary, God is before
the world by priority of duration, then, since priority and posteriority
of duration constitute time, it follows that there was time before the
creation of the world; which is impossible.[92]
In answer to this difficulty the holy doctor says that God is before
the world by priority of duration, but that the preposition “before”
designates here the priority, not of time, but of eternity. Or else we
must answer, he adds, that the word “before” designates a priority, not
of real, but of imaginary, time, just as the word “above” in the phrase
“above the heavens there is nothing” designates an imaginary space which
we may conceive by thinking of some imaginary dimensions superadded to
the dimensions of the heavens.[93]
It strikes us that the first of these two answers does not really solve
the difficulty. For the priority of eternity cannot mean but a priority
of nature and of pre-eminence, by which God’s permanent duration
infinitely _excels_, rather than _precedes_, all duration of creatures.
In accordance with this, the objector might still urge on his conclusion
that, if God does not precede the world, the world is _ab æterno_ like
God himself. The second answer agrees with what we ourselves have
hitherto said. But as regards the objection proposed, it leaves the
difficulty entire. For, if God was before the world by a priority, not of
real, but of imaginary time, that “before” is imaginary, and not real.
And the consequence will be that God was not really “before” the world,
but we imagine him to have been so.
We must own that with our imperfect language, mostly fashioned by
imagination, it is not easy to give a clear and popular solution of the
objection. Perhaps the most summary manner of dealing with it would be to
deny the inference in the first horn of the dilemma--viz., that if God is
before the world by priority of nature only, then the world will be _ab
æterno_ as much as God himself. This inference, we say, is to be denied;
for it involves the false supposition that a thing is _ab æterno_ if
there is no time before it; whereas that only is _ab æterno_ which has no
beginning of duration.
Thus there is no need of saying that God _precedes_ the world in
duration; for it suffices to admit that he was before the world by
priority of nature and of causality. The duration of eternity has no
“before” and no “after,” though we depict it to ourselves as extending
into indefinite time. Even the verb _was_ should not be predicated
of God; for God, strictly speaking, neither was, nor will be, but
permanently _is_. Hence it seems to us that it would be a contradiction
to affirm that God was _before_ the world by the duration of his
eternity, while we acknowledge that in his eternity there is no “before.”
But enough about this question.
_The duration of rest._--Supposing that a body, or an element of matter,
is perfectly at rest, it may be asked how the duration of this rest can
be ascertained and measured. Shall we answer that it is measured by time?
But if so, our reader will immediately conclude that time is not merely
the duration of movement, as we have defined it, but also the duration of
rest. On the other hand, how can we deny that rest is measured by time,
when we often speak of the rest of a few minutes or of a few hours?
We might evade the question by answering that nothing in creation lies
in absolute rest, but everything is acting and acted upon without
interruption, so that its movement is never suspended. But we answer
directly that, if there were absolute rest anywhere in the world, the
duration of that rest should be measured by the duration of exterior
movements. In fact, rest has no _before_ and _after_ in itself, because
it is immovable, but only outside of itself. It cannot therefore have
an intrinsic measure of its duration, but it must borrow it from the
_before_ and _after_ of exterior movement. In other words, the thing
which is in perfect rest draws no line of time; it has only a statical
_now_ which is a mere term of duration; and if everything in the world
were in absolute rest, time would cease altogether. Hence what we call
the duration of rest is simply the duration of a movement exterior to the
thing which is at rest.
This will be easily understood by considering that between a flowing and
a standing _now_ there is the same relation as between a moving and a
standing point.
Now, to change the relation of distance between two points in space, it
suffices that one of them move while the other stands still. This change
of distance is measured by the movement of the first point; and thus the
point which is at rest undergoes, without moving, a continuous change in
its relation to the moving point. In a similar manner, two _nows_ being
given, the one flowing and the other standing, the time extended by the
flowing of the first measures the change of its relation to the second,
and consequently, also, the change of the relation of the second to the
first. This shows that the time by which we measure the duration of rest
is nothing but the duration of the movement extrinsic to the thing at
rest.
But, as we have said, nothing in creation is in absolute rest; and
therefore what we consider as resting has really some movement
imperceptible to our senses--as, _v.g._, molecular vibrations--by which
the duration of its supposed rest is intrinsically measured. In God’s
eternity alone there is perfect immobility; but its duration cannot be
measured by time, even as an extrinsic measure, because the standing
duration of eternity has nothing common with the flowing duration of
creatures. As local movement cannot measure divine immensity, so flowing
duration cannot measure divine eternity; because, as the _ubi_ of a
creature never changes its relation to God’s immensity, so the _quando_
of a creature never changes its relation to God’s eternity.
_Continuity of time._--We will conclude with a few remarks on the
continuity of time. That time is essentially continuous is evident;
but the question has been proposed: What if God were to annihilate all
existing creatures, and to make a new creation? Would the instant of
annihilation be immediately followed by the instant of the new creation,
or could there be an interval of time between them?
The right answer to this question is that between the annihilation and
the new creation there would be no time: because there cannot be time
without succession, and no succession without creatures. Yet, it would
not follow that the instant of the annihilation should be immediately
united with the instant of the new creation; in other words, the duration
of the new world would not be a continuation of the duration of the world
annihilated. The reason of this is that there cannot be a continuation of
time, unless the same _now_ continues to flow. For when one flowing _now_
ceases to be, and another begins, the line of time drawn by the first
comes to an end, and another line, altogether distinct, begins, and this
latter cannot be a continuation of the former. If the English mail, for
instance, reaches New York at a given instant, and the French mail at the
same instant starts from Paris, no one will say that the movement of the
French mail is a continuation of the movement of the English mail. Hence
the duration of the movement of the one is not the continuation of that
of the other.
Moreover, from what we have seen about the distinct lines of time
described by distinct subjects of flowing duration, it is plain that
even the durations of simultaneous movements are always distinct from
one another, as belonging to distinct subjects; and accordingly, when
one of the said movements ceases, the continuation of the others cannot
be looked upon as its continuation. Hence, if the present world were
annihilated, its duration would cease altogether; and the duration of
a newly-created world would draw a new line of time quite distinct
from that of the present world, though between the end of the one and
the beginning of the other there would be no time. “The two worlds
in question,” as Balmes remarks, “would have no mutual relation;
consequently there would be neither distance nor immediateness between
them.”[94]
Time is _formally_ continuous. Formal continuity we call that of which
all the constituent elements have their own formal and distinct existence
in nature. In time such elements are those flowing instants which
unite the immediate past with the immediate future. This continuity is
essentially successive. It is owing to its successivity that time, as
well as movement, can be, and is, formally continuous. For no formal
continuum can be simultaneous, as we have shown where we refuted the
hypothesis of continuous matter.[95] But let this suffice about time.
AN INCIDENT OF THE REIGN OF TERROR.
The close of the XVIIIth century found the good people of these United
States in a most amiable mood. The consciousness of all they had
achieved, by sustaining their Declaration of Independence in the face of
overwhelming difficulties, produced a glow of national self-complacency
that has thrown its glamour over the first page of our public annals,
which--as history counts her pages by centuries--we are only now
preparing to turn. Not until we were drawing near its close was the
light of that agreeable illusion obscured by the shadow of a question
whether the “glorious Fourth” was not like to prove, after all, a most
_in_glorious failure.
Self-complacency is never an elevating sentiment, and seldom sustained
by the merits upon the assumed possession of which it is based. But our
people had many substantial virtues, sufficient to atone abundantly for
their indulgence in a pleasant foible. Among these was the principle of
gratitude, to which none but truly noble natures are subject. That they
possessed it was proved by their promptness in hastening to relieve and
comfort the French refugees whom the Reign of Terror had driven to our
shores when it was devastating that fair realm across the Atlantic which
had been the first to extend assistance and sympathy to us in the hour of
need.
We have vivid recollections of sitting for hours--patchwork in hand--at
the feet of a dear relative in the pleasant home of our childhood,
listening to thrilling tales of those times, many of them connected with
the French emigrants--of the cordial hospitality with which all the
homes of her native city of Hartford, Conn., were thrown open to receive
these interesting exiles; of the shifts the inhabitants devised and the
discomforts they endured in order to provide comfortable shelter and
sustenance for so many from means already impoverished by the drain of
the conflict through which we ourselves had but just passed.
Now, this dear relative was the possessor of a small gold locket of
antique fashion and exquisite workmanship, which was an object of
unceasing admiration to our childish fancy. In form it was an oblong
octagon. The border was a graceful tiny pattern in mosaic-gold inlaid
with amethyst and pearl. In the centre were two miniatures painted on
glass with marvellous distinctness and accuracy: the one a likeness
of that most unfortunate queen, Marie Antoinette, the other of her
beloved sister-in-law, the amiable Princess Elizabeth. A heavy pebble
crystal, perfectly transparent, covered the pictures without in the least
obscuring their delicate tints. In the back of the locket was an open
space, within which, our relative said, was once laid, upon the ground
of dark satin that still remained, a knot formed by two small locks of
glossy, silken hair, one a light rose-tinged auburn, the other flaxen
with a golden sheen. A glass covered these also.
After much persuasion our relative related to us the following
STORY OF THE LOCKET.
My father was an officer in the Continental army, and, soon after the
war of our Revolution closed, returned to his former home in the city
of Hartford, Conn., where he accepted an office of high municipal
trust. He was moved by the generous impulses of his nature to a life
of active benevolence; and when, in 1792-3, the Revolution in France
drove thousands of her citizens to take refuge in our republic, none
were more zealous and untiring than he in seeking out and providing for
the unfortunate strangers. Every apartment in our spacious house was
soon filled. Rooms were prepared in the carriage-house and barns for my
brothers and the domestics of the household, while my sisters and myself
took possession of a small room in the attic which had been a repository
for the spare bedding, now called into use.
Among our guests was one lady who was distinguished by having a spacious
room set apart for her sole use, and who seldom left it or mingled with
her companions in misfortune and exile. Upon the rare occasions when
she did appear briefly in their circle, it was striking to observe the
ceremonious deference, amounting almost to veneration, with which she
was received. Where or how my father found her I never knew; but his
manner towards her was so profoundly respectful as to impress us all
with feelings akin to fear in her presence. Yet these impressions were
produced by the demeanor of others only; for on her own part there was
not the slightest self-assertion or assumption of stateliness. Simple and
unobtrusive as a child in her manners, she was indescribably affable to
all; but her countenance wore an expression which, when once seen, could
never be forgotten. More forcibly and clearly than words did it convey
the story that some overwhelming deluge of calamity had swept from her
life every vestige of earthly hope and joy. By no outward token did she
parade her griefs. Her dress, plain, even severe, in its perfect neatness
and simplicity, displayed no mourning-badge, but her very smile was an
intimate revelation of sorrow.
She was known by the title of “Madame,” though some of our guests would
now and then add, when speaking of her in an undertone--not lost upon a
small listener like myself--“la Comtesse.” Her waiting-maid, Celeste, was
entirely devoted to her, and always served her slight and simple meals to
her in her own room.
Soon after her arrival I was sent on some errand to madame’s apartment,
and her agitation upon seeing me was a thing to be remembered for a
lifetime. She drew me to her bosom, caressing me with many tears,
suppressed sobs, and rapid exclamations in her own language. I learned
afterwards from Celeste that I was of the same age and bore a striking
resemblance in form and face to her daughter, who had been torn from
her in the storm and turmoil of their escape. They had been rescued
by a faithful servant, and hurried off, more dead than alive, in the
fright, confusion, and uproar of a terrible outbreak in Paris, and had
discovered, when too late, that her daughter had been separated from
them and was missing. Their deliverer promised to make every possible
effort to find the child, but Celeste had little hope; for she had heard
from the servant of another lady, who escaped later--but had never told
her mistress--that one of the women who daily watched the carts which
conveyed the victims to the guillotine had averred that she was sure she
saw the child among their number.
From the first I was a welcome visitor in the lady’s room. She
encouraged me to pass all the time with her which could be spared from
household duties; for in those days every child was required to perform
a portion of these. The schools in Hartford were, for the most part,
closed during that period, that the buildings might be devoted to the
accommodation of the strangers, who requited the kindness by teaching
the children of each household where they were entertained, daily. I was
the chosen pupil of madame. She soon imparted sufficient knowledge of
the French to give her instructions in her own language. Never was child
blest with a more gentle and painstaking teacher! To a thorough course
in the simple branches of study she added many delicate accomplishments
then unknown in our country, and the most patient training in all matters
connected with dress and deportment. After lessons she would hold long
conversations with me, more profitable than the lessons themselves,
awakening interest by suggestions and inquiries tending to form habits
of thinking, as well as of acquiring knowledge. Then such wonderful
fairy tales as she would relate! I used to listen perfectly entranced.
Never have I heard in English any fairy lore that would compare with it.
Translations we may have, but the fairy charm of the original is lost.
At that time the spirit of infidelity and atheism which laid the train
for the horrors of the French Revolution prevailed widely in our own
country. When too young to comprehend their import, I had often listened
to warm discussions between my father, who was strongly tinctured with
those opinions--while in politics he was an ultra-democrat--and my
maternal grandfather, a High-Churchman and Tory. The latter always
insisted--and it was all I understood of their conversations--that
it was impossible for a government founded upon popular unbelief and
insubordination to stand. He was utterly hopeless for ours, not because
it was democratic in form, but because the people no longer reverenced
authority, had ceased to be imbued with the first principle of loyalty
to God as Supreme Ruler, and to the “powers that be” as his appointed
instruments. These subjects were themes of constant debate, and were
treated with a warmth that commanded even the notice of children.
Some of our guests affected a gay and careless indifference to the claims
of God and man that amounted to a rejection of both; others vehemently
denounced all religion as a figment of priest-craft; while still another
class met such questions with the solemnity arising from a conviction of
the tremendous temporal and eternal interests which they involved.
It was refreshing to steal away from these evening debates in the
drawing-room to the peaceful atmosphere of madame’s apartment. I
frequently found her saying her beads, of which I knew nothing, only that
they were exceedingly beautiful to the sight, and composed of very costly
materials. I used to enter her room very quietly, and take my accustomed
seat in silence, until her devotions were closed. Of her religion I
knew no more than the name; but its evident influence upon every action
of her life left an indelible impression upon my mind that it was a
power above and beyond any of the prevailing forms around us. She never
spoke expressly of her religion to me, but the purely Christian tone
of her instructions upon all the duties of life, social and domestic,
exemplified by her own conduct, proved abundantly that it was more than
a mere sentiment or a name. I was too young at that time to reason upon
these things, but, as I have said, they left an indelible impression,
and, as life advanced, furnished food for many reveries which at length
ripened into serious thought.
How the weary months must have dragged along for those exiled
unfortunates! Yet the cheerfulness, even gayety, with which they endured
their misfortunes and the torturing suspense of their position, was a
matter of constant marvel to their New England friends. They watched the
arrival of every ship from France with intense anxiety, and a renewal of
grief and mourning was sure to follow the tidings it brought. Yet the
polite amenities and courtesies of their daily life, which seemed a part
of their nature, were never for a moment abated, and in the wildest storm
of grief even the women never lost that exquisite sense of propriety
which distinguishes their nation.
And so the time wore on until a certain memorable night in September,
1794. My father’s residence was situated upon an elevated street which
commanded a wide view of the city and its environs. How well I remember
standing with my sisters by the window of our attic dormitory, looking
out upon the quiet city sleeping under the calm light of the harvest
moon, on that never-to-be-forgotten night! The contemplation of the
scene was too pleasant to be easily relinquished, and it was late before
we could turn away from its fascinations to our rest. We were scarcely
lost in sleep when we were awakened suddenly by a thrilling shout in
the street, accompanied by the wild huzzahs of an excited multitude. We
hastened to the lower rooms, where we found the strangers gathered around
the open windows, from which they were waving handkerchiefs, hats, and
scarfs, and mingling their shouts with those of the throng outside.
In the street the city crier moved along in advance of the crowd, mounted
on a tall white horse, and waving an immense banner. At every crossing
he would pause and shout through a speaking-trumpet, “Rejoice! rejoice!
Robespierre, the tyrant, has fallen! has fallen!” Then followed the
jubilant cheers of the rapidly-increasing crowd. And so they passed on
through every street in the city.
I sought madame’s apartment, and found her kneeling in the same reverent
attitude of humble devotion with which I had so long been familiar.
Strange to say, my first thought upon hearing the news so joyful to
others was one of dismal apprehension, and my first emotion one of
ineffable sadness! Quick as thought came the painful assurance to my
heart that this was the signal for my final separation from the loving
friend, the gentle teacher, to whom I had become inexpressibly attached.
As she arose and extended her arms towards me, I threw myself into them,
and, hiding my face in her bosom, gave way to a burst of uncontrollable
grief. Words were not necessary to explain its cause. Understanding it
at a glance, she caressed and soothed me with assurances of her undying
love, and that she could never forget or cease to pray for the child
whom heaven had appointed to be her dearest consolation under her great
afflictions.
My apprehensions proved well founded. The same ship which brought tidings
of the tyrant’s fall brought letters also to madame from faithful
friends, urging her immediate return to France.
My father accompanied her to Boston, in order to make needful preparation
for her departure on the next outward-bound vessel. I was thrown into
such an agony of grief at the thought of parting with her that madame
begged I might be permitted to go with them, urging that the change of
scene and a visit to relatives in Boston might divert my thoughts and
soothe the bitter anguish of my young heart. He consented, and, when we
reached the city, he left us at the house of his sister, where I found
my cousins all engaged preparing for an examination and exhibition which
was to take place the next day to close the term of the school they were
attending, on the same street and near by.
They insisted that I should go with them, and madame dressed me in a
white muslin with a blue sash. She then hung the locket you so much
admire, suspended from a delicate gold chain, around my neck, and I set
off with my cousins.
We found the girls grouped together in great glee, awaiting the opening
exercises. In the centre of the group was a fair and graceful girl, near
my own age and size, with a large basket containing bouquets of flowers
arranged with admirable taste, which the girls were purchasing for
themselves and to decorate the school-room.
My cousins replied to my questions about the young stranger: “Oh! we call
her the little flower girl. She lives with a farmer just out of the city.
The family are very fond of her, and he gives her a little place in the
garden to cultivate flowers, and lets her come with him on market days to
sell them for herself in the city. She heard of what was going on here,
and thought this would be a good market for her bouquets; and so it has
been, for she has sold them all.”
For some reason I could not turn my eyes from the child. There seemed to
be a mutual fascination which drew us together, and I observed she was
looking intently and with much emotion at the locket I wore. I asked her
why she was so much interested in it. She answered with a slight French
accent: “My mamma had such a locket, and all the ladies of the queen’s
household wore them.”
“And where is your mamma?” I inquired.
“Alas! I do not know if she is living. I lost her in a great crowd in the
streets of Paris, and was so frightened at the horrors around me that I
remember nothing until I found myself on board the ship which brought
me here. How I came there I never knew. The kind-hearted farmer with
whom I live was on the wharf when we landed, and, in great pity for my
bewildering loneliness and grief, took me to his home, where I have since
received every attention and sympathy.”
Almost sinking under agitation, I turned to my cousins, who had been too
much occupied with their own affairs to notice us, and faintly gasped:
“She is, she must be, the daughter for whom madame mourns!”
At the bare suggestion all else was forgotten! There was an impetuous
huddling of our electrified companions around the bewildered little
stranger, and a petition that the school exercises might be delayed
until they could escort her to my aunt and learn whether my conjecture
was true. So great was their excitement that it was useless to deny the
request, and we led our heroine off with hasty steps.
On the way we decided that my aunt should break the matter gently to
madame, and introduce the child to her in her room.
There was no need of an introduction! The moment their eyes met the
exclamations “Antoinette!” “Mamma!” burst from their lips, and my aunt
left them locked in a close embrace. The scene was too sacred for
intrusion!
The news flew with the speed of the wind, and there were great rejoicings
far and near over the timely discovery brought about by means of the
locket, which madame bestowed upon me (after removing the knot of
hair, too precious, as a relic of her lamented queen and the Princess
Elizabeth, to be relinquished) in memory of this joyful event, and as a
souvenir of the beloved friend and teacher with whom I had passed so many
happy and profitable hours.
Soon after the reunion of the mother and child they sailed for France,
and I returned with my father to a home which was now bereft of a charm
that could never be replaced or restored. But my sympathy with their joy
was too sincere to be chilled by selfish regrets.
During my father’s stay in Boston he made some final arrangements
connected with a large territory of wild lands which he had received from
the government in partial requital of his services in the army.
To that distant wilderness he removed his family immediately after our
return. The absence of mail communication with such remote districts,
in those days, was doubtless the reason why we never received further
tidings from one who had placed us among the favored few that “have
entertained angels unawares.”
In the loneliness of my forest home, and through a long life marked by
many changes and sorrows, I have cherished grateful memories of the early
lessons I received from her lips, and they have proved, through their
influence upon my religious and moral being, a legacy far more precious
than a thousand caskets of gold and precious stones.
THE CHARITIES OF ROME.
The present sacrilegious invaders of Rome have done much to change the
religious aspect of the city, and obliterate every trace of the influence
of the popes upon the charities once so liberally thrown open to the
people of every clime and color. In the true spirit of modern “progress,”
philanthropy has usurped the place of charity, and the state, taking
possession of institutions founded and hitherto directed in many points
by the church, banishes her as far from them as possible. It may be
interesting to pass in review some of those magnificent charities which
sprang up and flourished so long under pontifical protection, but which
have lately either been violently suppressed or are fast disappearing
under the difficulties of the political situation. We will write of these
charities as they existed in 1869, which was the last year during the
whole of which the papal government had control of them. In that year
an English Protestant writer, long resident in Rome, was obliged by the
clearness of facts to tell his readers that “few cities in Europe are so
distinguished for their institutions of public charity as Rome, and in
none are the hospitals more magnificently lodged or endowed with more
princely liberality. The annual endowments of these establishments are no
less than 258,390 scudi, derived from lands and houses, from grants, and
from the papal treasury.”
When S. Peter entered Rome for the first time, and looked upon the
miserable condition of those to whom the favors of fortune were denied,
he recalled to mind the words addressed to his forefathers about to enter
into the promised land: “There shall be no poor nor beggar among you:
that the Lord thy God may bless thee in the land which he giveth thee to
possess” (Deut. xv. 4), and saw before him one of the greatest obstacles
to be overcome--involving a change of what was second nature to the
Romans (hardness of heart), they being, as S. Paul wrote (Rom. i. 31),
“without affection, without mercy”--but knowing that it was also said
in the same holy text “Poor will not be wanting in the land: therefore
I command thee to open thy hand to thy needy and poor brother,” and
having heard the blessed Lord Jesus say of the new dispensation, “The
poor ye have always with you,” he understood that God’s object was not
to forbid mendicity, but to leave no room for it. Therefore to the rich
and powerful, when brought by grace to his apostolic feet, he enjoined:
“Deal thy bread to the hungry, and bring the needy and the harborless
into thy house” (Isaias lviii. 7). The faith of the Roman Christians was
illustrious throughout the world, and so was their charity. From the
days of S. Peter it had been customary to take up collections on Sundays
in all the congregations of the city for the relief of the confessors
condemned to labor in the public mines and other works, or languishing
in prison, or wandering in exile; and Eusebius has preserved in his
_Ecclesiastical History_ (lib. iv. cap. 23) the testimony of Dionysius,
Bishop of Corinth (161-192), in favor of the long-established charitable
institutions of the Romans, and in praise, at the same time, of the piety
of his contemporary, Pope S. Soter, who not only retained these customs
of his people, but surpassed them in sending money to the Christians
of other parts of the world, and in receiving, as though they were his
own children, all faithful pilgrims to Rome. In the year 236 Pope S.
Fabian gave charge of the poor of Rome to seven deacons each of whom
superintended two of the fourteen civil divisions or regions, whence
they were called regionary deacons. A memorial of their occupation still
remains in the dalmatic, or deacon’s vestment, the wide sleeves of which
served originally for pockets; and Pope Innocent III., in his treatise
on the Mass, remarks that this kind of dress is attributed to deacons
because, in the first institution of their order, the distribution of
alms was assigned to them. A council of the IVth century, held under
Pope Sylvester, decreed that one-fourth part of the church revenues
should be set apart for the poor. S. Jerome attests in one of his letters
that a noble matron named Fabiola erected a hospital in the year 400;
and about the same time S. Gallicanus, a man of consular dignity, who
had also been honored with a triumph, becoming a Christian, founded a
similar institution at the mouth of the Tiber for the accommodation of
pilgrims and of the sick. He waited upon them in person. In 1869 Rome had
a population of about 220,000 inhabitants, and, although the climate is
not unhealthy, it is hardly one of the most salubrious in the world. The
low land upon which a great part of the modern city is built; the turbid
Tiber, which, passing through it in a winding course, is apt to overflow
its banks; the open position of the city, which is exposed, according to
the season, either to the sultry African wind or to the piercing blasts
from the neighboring mountains; and the large floating population, which
is everywhere a likely subject of disease, combine to make it desirable
that Rome should be well provided with institutions of succor and relief.
While under papal rule, she was not wanting in this respect, but was even
abundantly and excellently supplied.
Man, being composed of spirit and matter, having consequently a soul
and a body to look after, has wants of two kinds, corresponding to the
twofold claims of his nature. We should therefore divide the charities
man is capable of receiving into two classes. He received them in
Rome with a generous hand. The first class comprehended relief to
the indigent, the sick, the destitute, the insane, the convalescent;
possessed hospitals and asylums, brought aid into private families,
opened nocturnal retreats, offered work to the honest needy, gave
marriage portions to the nubile, shielded widows, protected orphans,
advanced money on the easiest terms. These were charities of subsistence.
The second class embraced poor schools and other establishments for
gratuitous education in trades, arts, and sciences, conservatories for
the exposed, hospices for the reformed, and made provision for the legal
defence of the weak. These were called charities of education.
There were two institutions in Rome that assisted the poor before they
had fallen into misery or become destitute. These were the _Monte di
Pietà_ and the savings-bank. The first was a bank of loan and deposit.
The idea of such an institution was suggested by a pious and shrewd
Franciscan, named Barnabas of Terni, who was painfully struck, during a
mission he was giving in Perugia in the year 1462, by the enormous usury
(a crime then practised almost exclusively by Jews) which the poor were
forced to pay for any advance of money they might need. This practical
friar prevailed upon several wealthy persons to mass sums of money into
one fund, out of which to lend to the poor at a reasonable (and in some
cases merely nominal) rate of interest. Hence the distinctive name of
Monte di Pietà, which means literally mountain of mercy. The Roman
_Monte_ was the third institution of the sort that was opened. This was
in the year 1539. It was to lend money up to a certain amount without
taking interest; above this amount for a very small interest. It was to
take articles on pawn, and give the appraised value, less one-third. Over
$100,000 used, under the papal government, to be annually loaned out
on pawns or otherwise without one cent of interest. This establishment
occupied a superb public building, and was under the control of the
Minister of Finance. Honest visitors were freely admitted into every part
of it; and we have heard many (even hard-fisted) English and Americans
express themselves surprised, if not satisfied, with this reasonable and
conscientious manner of saving the poor from the gripe of usurers and
pawn-brokers, while imposing enough restraint to discourage improvidence.
No hope was held out of indiscriminate relief. Looking at the _Monte_
in an antiquarian light, it was a perfect museum of modern life, and
to go through it was as good as visiting a hundred consolidated old
curiosity-shops. Its administration employed, including a detachment of
the Swiss Guard, one hundred persons. The capital, which consisted of
every kind of property that at various periods and from many benefactors
had come to it, was about three million dollars. The most orthodox
political economists acknowledge that institutions of this sort were
devised only as a lesser evil; and consequently the Roman government
was glad to see the business of the _Monte_ fall away considerably
after the opening of the savings-bank in 1836. This was a charitable
institution, because it was governed gratuitously by an administration
of eleven honest and intelligent men, among whom were some of the first
nobility, who thus gave a portion of their time and talents to the
poor. The cashier, Prince Borghese, gave, besides his services, a part
of his magnificent palace to be turned into offices for the business
transactions of the bank.
The Apostolic Almonry in the Vatican next claimed our attention in the
quiet days of the Pope. From the earliest period the vicars of Christ
have made it a practice to visit in person the poor, and distribute
alms with their own hands, in love and imitation of Him who “went about
doing good.” As the wealth of the church in Rome increased, it was found
necessary for the better ordering of things to have some administrative
assistance in the distribution of these private charities. S. Conon
I., in the VIIth century, employed the arch-priest Paschal to dispense
the bounty of the privy purse; and in the year 1271 Blessed Gregory
X. created the perpetual office of grand almoner in the papal court.
This officer is always an archbishop _in partibus_, and lives under
the same roof as the Holy Father, in order to be ready at all times to
receive his commands. Besides the many standing largitions issued from
the Grand Almonry, there were occasional ones, such as the largess of
$300 which was distributed in the great court-yard of Belvidere on each
anniversary of the Pope’s coronation. This sum was doubled the first
year. On each of the following civil or religious festivals, Christmas,
Easter, and Coronation day, $165 were divided among a certain number of
the best-behaved prisoners confined in Rome. About $650 a month were paid
out either at the word of the sovereign or on his order; while a sum of
$2,000 was annually divided among one hundred poor families. Besides
this, the Grand Almonry supported a number of free schools, dispensed
food and medicines, and performed many acts of more secret charity. A
memorial of the earlier personal distribution of alms by the popes is
retained in the _Succinctorium_, which they wear in solemn pontificals.
It is an ornament of silk of the color of the feast, fringed with gold,
and suspended down the left side from the girdle. On Good Friday the
succinctory is not worn, in execration of the evil use Judas Iscariot
made of the purse when he betrayed our Lord for thirty pieces of silver.
Another of the great charities of Rome was the Commission of Subsidies
established by Pope Leo XII., in 1826, to give assistance and employment
to poor but honest people, willing to help themselves if they could find
the opportunity. The whole tendency of Roman charities under the popes
was to frown upon sloth and vagrancy, and encourage self-reliance and
mutual support; for S. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians (2, iii. 10): “If
any man will not work, neither let him eat.” The commission received
a yearly subsidy from government of $88,500. In each of the fourteen
rioni or wards of the city a physician, surgeon, pharmacist, and midwife
rendered gratuitous services under its control. It was by the judicious
employment of such men, thrown on the hands of the commission, that
within the last thirty years so much was done in making excavations in
and about Rome in search of antiquities and in studying its ancient
topography. We have sometimes heard English and American sight-seers make
brutal remarks about “those dirty, lazy Romans,” as they would stop a
moment to look at some party of these poor fellows taking their work so
easily in the Forum, on the Palatine, or elsewhere; but we should rather
applaud the paternal government that refrained from calling poverty a
crime or driving the poor and weak to their work like galley-slaves; and
while contributing a generous support, gave them enough to do to save
their self-respect.
No such thing as work-houses, in the English sense, have ever been
maintained where Catholic influences have predominated; and for this we
may thank God.
Another category of Roman charities comprised the confraternities. These
associations for purposes of piety and mutual help convey in their name
the idea of brotherliness and union. There were no fewer than ninety-one
confraternities in Rome under the popes. The oldest and most famous of
these was the Annunciation, which was founded in 1460 by the Dominican
Cardinal John Torquemada, in Santa Maria-in-Minerva, the head church of
his order in Rome.[96] Its particular object was to give portions to
poor but virtuous young females, that they might either marry or enter a
religious house if they had a vocation. On the 25th of March, Lady-day,
the pope, cardinals, and prelates, with the rest of the court, used to
assist at Mass in that church, and preside at the distribution of dowers
which followed immediately. The girls were always dressed in plain
white; such as had signified their choice of the heavenly Spouse being
distinguished by a wreath on the head. On this occasion the pontiff gave
one hundred golden scudi, and each cardinal present gave one, to the
funds of the confraternity. There were fourteen other confraternities
that had the same object, although carried out with less solemnity. In
this way $42,000 used to be expended annually.
The Confraternity of the Twelve Apostles made it a special point to find
out and relieve in a delicate manner those who, having known better days,
were fallen into reduced circumstances. The Confraternity of Prayer and
Death buried the dead; and if an accident in or about Rome was reported
in which life was lost, a party was detailed to go and bring the body
in decently for Christian burial. Sometimes a poor herdsman on the
Campagna had been gored by an ox, or some fellow had been swept away and
drowned in the Tiber, or perhaps a reaper been prostrated by the heat;
at whatever hour of the day or night, and at all seasons, a band of this
confraternity went out, and returned carrying the unfortunate person on
a stretcher upon their shoulders. It must be remarked in this connection
that the members of the confraternity always observed the laws concerning
deaths of this kind, not interfering with, but merely placing themselves
at the disposal of, the officers of justice, to give a body burial at
their own expense and in consecrated ground. The Confraternity of Pity
for Prisoners was founded in 1575 by Father John Tallier, a French
Jesuit. It provided religious instruction for prisoners, distributed
objects of piety among them, looked after their families if destitute,
and assisted them to pay their debts and fines if they had any. The
Confraternity of S. John Baptist was composed exclusively of Florentines
and the descendants of Florentines. Its object was to comfort and assist
to the last, criminals condemned to death. As decapitation was the mode
of judicial punishment, S. John Baptist, who was slain by Herod, was
their patron, and his head on a charger the arms of the confraternity.
Although there were so many confraternities and other pious associations
in Rome, connected by their object with institutions of every kind,
sanitary, corrective, etc., they were very careful never to interfere
with the regulations of such establishments; and consequently, by minding
their own business, they were not in the way of the officials, but, on
the contrary, were looked upon as valuable assistants. The Society of S.
Vincent of Paul was started in Rome in 1842 by the late venerable Father
de Ravignan, S.J. It counted twenty-eight conferences and one thousand
active members, clergy and laymen, titled folks and trades-people all
working harmoniously together. About $2,100 was annually dispensed by the
society. The Congregation of Ladies was founded in 1853 by Monsignor--now
Cardinal--Borromeo to give work, especially needle-work, to young women
out of employment. A great many ecclesiastical vestments were thus made
under the direction of the ladies, and either sent as presents to poor
missions, or sold, for what they would bring, at the annual fair held for
the purpose of disposing of them.
There were seven public hospitals in Rome, under the immediate direction
of a general board of administration composed of twelve members, of whom
three belonged to the clergy and the rest to the laity. The oldest,
largest, and best-appointed institution of this kind was Santo Spirito,
situated in the Leonine quarter of the city, on the border of the Tiber.
Its site has been occupied by a charitable institution ever since A.D.
728; the earliest building having been founded there for his countrymen
by Ina, King of Wessex. For this reason the whole pile of buildings is
called Santo Spirito _in Saxia_--_i.e._, in the quarter of the (West)
Saxons. There are three distinct establishments under the administration
of Santo Spirito--viz., the hospital itself, the Foundling Hospital,
and the Lunatic Asylum. The first was founded by Pope Innocent III.
in 1198, the Saxons having abandoned this locality for a more central
position--the present S. Thomas-of-the-English. It has received since
then many additions, until it has assumed the enormous proportions that
we now admire. Every improvement was made to keep pace with the advance
of hygienic knowledge. This hospital was for men only. It had 1,616
beds and an annual average of 14,000 patients. The wards were twelve
in number, in which the cleanliness was refreshing, the ventilation
excellent, and the water-supply pure and abundant. The principal parts
of the exterior, and some of the interior parts of the building, were
by distinguished architects; while some of the wards had their ceilings
and upper walls painted in fresco with scenes from Sacred Scripture,
such as the sufferings of Job and the miraculous cures made by our Lord.
Not only the eye but the ear too of the poor patients was pleased; for
three times a week they were entertained with organ music from a lofty
choir erected at one end of the largest wards. The spiritual care of
the sick was perfect; it was impossible for any one to die without the
rites of the church. In the centre of every ward there was a fixed
altar, upon which Mass was said daily. The Confraternity of Santo
Spirito, composed of clergy and laymen, assisted the regular ministers of
religion in attendance day and night. These volunteers brought flowers
to the patients, read to them, prepared them for confession and other
sacraments, and disposed them to die a good death, besides performing for
them the most menial services.
We remember to have read a letter addressed to the New York _Post_ by
an eminent Protestant clergyman of New York, in which, after describing
this institution (then under papal rule), he said that he could not
speak too highly of the excellent attendance the patients received from
the kind-hearted religious who were stationed there, and added that if
ever he had to come to a hospital, he hoped it would be Santo Spirito.
The Foundling Hospital was opened by Pope Innocent III.; and the Lunatic
Asylum, for both sexes, was founded in 1548 by three Spaniards, a priest
and two laymen. It was called the House of Our Lady of Mercy. A fine
garden on the Janiculum Hill was attached to it for the recreation of
the patients. We do not know how it is conducted since it has changed
hands, but formerly it was managed on the system of kindness towards
even the fiercest madmen, using only so much restraint as was positively
necessary. It was then under the care of religious. The Hospital of the
Santissimo Salvatore, near St. John of Lateran, was founded in 1236 by
a Cardinal Colonna. It was for women only. Another Cardinal Colonna
founded the Hospital of S. James, for incurables, in 1339. Our Lady
of Consolation was a fine hospital near the Forum for the maimed and
wounded; while San Gallicano, on the other side of the river, was for
fevers and skin-diseases. San Rocco was a small lying-in hospital, with
accommodation for 26 women. It was founded at the beginning of the XVIIth
century by a Cardinal Salviati. The most delicate precautions were always
used there to save any sense of honor that might still cling to a victim
of frailty. Guilt could at least blush unnoticed. The Santissima Trinità
was founded by S. Philip Neri for convalescents of both sexes and for
poor pilgrims. It could lodge 488 patients, had beds for 500 pilgrims,
and table-room for 900. In the great refectory of this building the
members of the confraternity came on every Holy Thursday evening to wash
the feet of the pilgrims and wait on them at table. Of course the two
sexes were in different parts of the building, and each was attended by
its own. We remember the delightful ardor with which the late Cardinal
Barnabo on such occasions would turn up his sleeves, twitch his apron,
and, going down on his knees, give some poor man’s feet a better washing
than they had had before in a year. There was much raising of soap-suds
in that wooden tub, and a real, earnest kiss on one foot when the
washing was over. The Hospital of S. John Calabyta was so called from a
Spaniard, the founder of the Brothers of Charity (commonly called the
_Benfratelli_), who attended it. It was opened in 1581, on the island of
the Tiber; and by a coincidence then perhaps unknown, but since fully
brought to light, it stood on the very site of an _asclepium_ which the
priests of Esculapius kept near their god’s temple two thousand years
ago. The Hospital of Santa Galla was founded in 1650 by the princely
Odescalchi family. It gave a night asylum to homeless men. There were
224 beds, distributed through nine dormitories. Another night refuge,
called S. Aloysius, was founded about the year 1730 by Father Galluzzi,
a Florentine Jesuit. It is for women. We can get some idea of the great
charity such refuges are when we know that during the year ending
December, 1869, no less than 135,000 persons sought a resting-place at
night in the station-houses of New York. Besides these public hospitals,
almost every Catholic country had a private national one. One of
the picturesque and not least of the Roman charities used to be the
daily distribution of food at the gates of monasteries, convents, and
nunneries, the portals of palaces, and the doors of seminaries, colleges,
and boarding-schools.
With all this liberality, there was still some room for hand-alms. There
used to be beggars in Rome; assassins have taken their place. Under the
papal government a limit was put to beggary, and we have never seen the
_sturdy_ beggar who figures so maliciously in some Protestant books about
Rome. Beggary may become an evil; it is not a crime. We confess to liking
beggars if they are not too numerous and importunate. Few scenes have
seemed to us more venerable, picturesque, and Christian than the double
row of beggars, with their sores and crippled limbs, their sticks and
battered hats and outstretched hands, imploring _per è amore di Dio_, as
we pass between them to the church or cemetery or other holy place on
feast-day afternoons in Rome.
The Hospice of San Michele was founded in 1686 by a Cardinal Odescalchi.
In this asylum nearly 800 persons used to be received. They were divided
into four classes--old men, old women, boys, and girls. The institution
had an annual endowment of $52,000; but some years ago the aged of
both sexes were removed elsewhere, and their part of the building was
converted into a house of correction for women and juvenile offenders.
The hospice, in its strict sense, now consists of a House of Industry for
children of both sexes, and a gratuitous school of the industrial and
fine arts. The carping author of Murray’s _Hand-book_ (1869), although
he acknowledges that this school of arts has produced some eminent
men, says that “the education of the boys might be turned, perhaps, to
more practically useful objects!” As if, forsooth, it were a lesser
charity, in the great home of the arts that Rome is, to help a poor
lad of talent to become an architect, for instance, than to make him a
tailor! The orphan asylum of Saint Mary of the Angels was near the Baths
of Diocletian. The boys numbered 450, under the care of male religious,
and the girls 500, under that of female religious. The institution
received annually $38,000 from the Commission of Subsidies. In the
same quarter of the city is the Deaf and Dumb Asylum. It was opened in
1794 by Father Silvestri, who had been sent to Paris by Pope Pius VI.
to receive instruction from the celebrated Abbé de l’Epée in the art
of teaching this class of unfortunates. Visitors to the house are made
welcome, and are often invited to test the knowledge of the pupils by
asking them questions on the blackboard. The first time we called there
was in 1862, and, having asked one of the boys, taken at hazard, who
was the first President of the United States, we were a little surprised
(having thought to puzzle him) to have the correct answer at once. The
House of Converts was an establishment where persons who wished to become
Catholics were received for a time and instructed in the faith. It was
founded in 1600 by a priest of the Oratory. Other interesting hospices
were the Widows’ Home and the House for Aged Priests, where the veterans
of the Roman clergy could end their days in honorable comfort. A peculiar
class of Roman charities were the conservatories. They were twenty-three
in number. Some of them were for penance, others for change of life,
and others again to shield unprotected virtue. The Infant Asylum was a
flourishing institution directed by female religious. Even fashion was
made to do something for it, since a noble lady years ago suggested that
the members of good society in Rome should dispense with their mutual New
Year visits on condition of giving three pauls (a small sum of money) to
the asylum, and having their names published in the official journal.
The Society for the Propagation of the Faith was established at Rome in
1834. No city of the size and population of Rome was better supplied with
free schools of every description. The night-schools were first opened in
1819. In connection with studies we should mention the liberal presents
of books, vestments, and liturgical articles made to young missionaries
by the Propaganda, and the books on learned subjects, which, being
printed at government expense, were sold at a reduced price to students
of every nation on showing a certificate from one of their professors.
It is written (Matthew iv. 4), “Man liveth not by bread alone”; and
consequently Rome multiplied those pious houses of retreat in which
the soul could rest for a time from the cares of life. There were five
such establishments in the city. Another great Roman charity was the
missions preached by the Jesuits and Franciscans in and around the city,
thus bringing the truths of the Gospel constantly before the people. We
have given but a brief sketch of our subject. It has been treated in
a complete manner by Cardinal Morichini in a new and revised edition
of his interesting work entitled _Degl’ Istituti di Pubblica Carità ed
istruzione primaria e delle prigioni in Roma_.
SONG.
I.
When in the long and lonely night
That brings no slumber to mine eyes,
Through dark returns the vision bright,
The face and form that day denies,
And, like a solitary star
Revealed above a stormy sea,
Thy spirit soothes me from afar,
I mourn thee not, nor weep for thee.
II.
And when I watch the dawn afar
Awake her sleeping sister night,
And overhead the dying star
Return into her parent light,
And in the breaking day discern
The glimmer of eternity,
The goal, the peace, for which I yearn,
I mourn thee not, nor weep for thee.
III.
And when the melancholy eve
Brings back the hour akin to tears,
And through the twilight I perceive
The settled, strong, abiding spheres,
And gently on my heart opprest
Like dew descending silently,
There falls a portion of thy rest,
I mourn thee not, nor weep for thee.
IV.
But when once more the stir of life
Makes all these busy highways loud,
And fretted by the jarring strife,
The noisy humors of the crowd,
The subtle, sweet suggestions born
Of silence fail, and memory
Consoles no more, I mourn, I mourn
That thou art not, and weep for thee.
PROGRESS _VERSUS_ GROOVES.
“How do you like your new minister, Mrs. B.?”
“Very much indeed! He is progressive--is not fixed in any of the old
grooves. His mind does not run in those ancient ruts that forbid advance
and baffle modern thought.”
How strangely this colloquy between a Methodist and Congregationalist
fell upon the Catholic ear of their mutual friend! Comment, however,
was discreetly forborne. That friend had learned in the very infancy
of a Catholic life, beginning at the mature age of thirty-five by the
register, the futility of controversy, and that the pearls of truth
are too precious to be carelessly thrown away. Strangely enough these
expressions affected one whose habits of thought and conduct had been
silently forming in accordance with that life for twenty-five years!
“Old grooves” indeed! Lucifer found them utterly irreconcilable with his
“advanced ideas” in heaven. Confessedly, the success of his progressive
enterprise was not encouraging; but the battle and its results
established his unquestionable claim as captain and leader of the sons
and daughters of progress for all time.
“Modern thought!” So far as we can discover, the best it has done for its
disciples is to prove to them beyond a doubt that their dear grandpapa of
eld was an ape, and that they, when they shake off this mortal coil, will
be gathered to their ancestors in common with their brethren, the modern
monkeys!
We, who believe the authentic history of the past, can see in this
boasted new railroad, upon which the freight of modern science and
advanced civilization is borne, a pathway as old as the time when our
dear, credulous old grandmamma received a morning call in Eden from
the oldest brother of these scientific gentlemen, who convinced her in
the course of their pleasant chat that poor deluded Adam and herself
were fastened in the most irrational rut--a perfect outrage upon common
sense--and that a very slight repast upon “advanced ideas” would lift
them out of it, emancipate thought, and make them as “gods knowing good
and evil.”
We all know how well they succeeded in their first step on the highway
of progress. They lost a beautiful garden, it is true, of limited
dimensions, but they gained a world of boundless space, and a freedom
of thought and action which was first successfully and completely
illustrated by their first-born son when he murmured, “Why?” and killed
his brother, who was evidently attached to grooves.
They left the heritage thus gained to a large proportion of their
descendants. A minority of them, it is true, prefer to “seek out the old
paths” of obedience to the commands of God, “and walk therein”--to shun
the “broad road” along which modern civilization is rolling its countless
throngs, and to “enter in at the strait gate” which leadeth to life
eternal, to the great disgust of the disciples of modern thought, who
spare no effort to prove their exceeding liberality by persecuting such
with derision, calumny, chains, imprisonment, and death!
Thank God this is all they can do! Rage they never so furiously, He that
sitteth in the heavens laughs them to scorn. He will defend and preserve
his anointed against all the combined hosts of Bismarcks, kaisers, and
robber princes, who illustrate the liberal ideas that govern the march of
modern civilization.
TRACES OF AN INDIAN LEGEND.
It has been said of our energetic republic that it had no infancy; that
it sprang into a vigorous and complete existence at a bound. However
true this may be with respect to its material structure in the hands of
the remarkable men who first planted colonies on American soil, there is
another view of the picture which presents widely different features.
To the eye of the Christian philosopher the religious and moral aspects
of our country to this day afford subjects for anything but satisfactory
reflection.
The pioneers of civilization along the northeastern borders of our
territory were--whatever their professions to the contrary may have
been--worshippers of material prosperity. The worship of God and the
claims of religion were indeed important and proper in their place for
a portion of the seventh part of each week, but the moment they came in
conflict with Mammon there was little question which should yield. It was
not to be expected that the saints whom the Lord had specially chosen,
and unto whom “He had given the earth,” should be diverted from their
pursuit of the great “main chance” by precepts which were applicable
only to ordinary and less favored mortals.
Whatever progress the church has yet achieved in this region is the
result of appalling labors and sacrifices. The foundation was laid in
sufferings, fatigues, and perils, from the contemplation of which the
self-indulgent Christians of our day would shrink aghast; laid long
before the so-called Pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth, while the
savage still roamed through the unbroken forests of New England, and
disputed dominion with wild beasts hardly more dangerous than himself
to the messengers of the Gospel of peace. Amid the wonderful beauty and
variety of the panorama which her mountains, lakes, and valleys unfold to
the tourists and pleasure-seekers of to-day, there is scarcely a scene
that has not been traversed in weariness, in hunger, and cold by those
dauntless servants of God who first proclaimed the tidings of salvation
to the wild children of the forest.
Futile, and even foolish, as the toils of these early fathers may appear
to the materialist and utilitarian of this day, because of their tardy
and apparently inadequate fruits, the designs of Heaven have not been
frustrated, and its light reveals a very different history. We read
therein how He who causes “the weak and foolish things of this world
to confound the wise” and to proclaim his praise, sent his ministering
angels to hover over the pathway moistened with the tears and blood of
his servants, to note each footprint through the dreary wilderness, to
gather the incense of each prayer, and to mark each pain and peril of
their sacrificial march for record in the archives of eternity, as an
earnest for future good to those regions, and as enduring testimony
before the high court of heaven to their fitness for the crown--far
surpassing in glory all earthly crowns--which they won by their burning
zeal and unwavering patience.
Nor were their efforts in the field of their earthly labors so vain as
some of our modern historians would have us suppose. Prayer and exertion
in the service of God are never fruitless. If it is true--as the great
Champlain was wont to say--“that one soul gained for heaven was of more
value than the conquest of an empire for France,” they gained from the
roving tribes of the desert many sincere and steadfast adherents to
the faith--whose names are recorded in the book of life--and scattered
benedictions along their painful pathway which have shed their beneficent
influences over the scenes they traversed down to the present day. We
hope to illustrate and sustain this assertion in the following sketch,
drawn from our memory, of traditions--preserved among the Indians of St.
Regis--to which we listened many years ago.
Scattered along the southern shores of the St. Lawrence, from the foot
of Lake Ontario to the village of St. Regis--while St. Lawrence County,
N.Y., was yet for the most part covered with primitive forests--were
many encampments of these Indians. That whole region abounded in game
and furnished favorite hunting-grounds, to which they claimed a right
in connection with their special reservation in the more immediate
neighborhood of St. Regis. At each of these encampments an aged Indian
was sure to be found, who, without the title of chief, was a kind of
patriarch among his younger brethren, exercised great influence in their
affairs, and was treated with profound respect by them. He was their
umpire in all disputes, their adviser in doubtful matters, and the
“leader of prayer” in his lodge--always the largest and most commodious
of the wigwams, and the one in which they assembled for their devotions.
One of the oldest of these sages--called “Captain Simon”--must have
been much more than a hundred years of age, judging from the dates of
events of which he retained a distinct remembrance as an eye-witness,
and which occurred in the course of the French and Indian wars, over a
century previous to the time when we listened to his recital. His head
was an inexhaustible store-house of traditions and legends, many of them
relating to the discovery and settlement of Canada and the labors of the
first missionaries. He was very fond of young people, and, gathering the
children of the white settlers around him, he would hold them spell-bound
for hours while he related stories of those early days in his peculiarly
impressive and figurative language. He claimed that his grandfather was
one of the party who accompanied Champlain on his first voyage through
the lake which bears his name, and that he afterwards acted as guide and
interpreter to the first priest who visited the valley of Lake Champlain.
When he heard that we were from Vermont, he asked for a piece of chalk,
and, marking on the floor an outline of the lake and the course of the
Richelieu River, he proceeded to narrate the voyage of Champlain and his
party in the summer of 1609.
Embosomed within the placid waters of Lake Champlain, near its northern
extremity, is a lovely island, of which Vermonters boast as the “Gem
of the Lake,” so remarkable is it for beauty and fertility. Here the
party landed, and Champlain, erecting a cross, claimed the lake--to
which he gave his own name--its islands and shores, for France and for
Christianity. Half a century later one La Motte built a fort upon this
island, which he named St. Anne, giving the island his own name; and it
is called the Isle La Motte to this day.
Champlain explored the lake as far as Crown Point, where they encountered
and defeated a band of Iroquois Indians; but not deeming it wise to
adventure further at that time so near such powerful foes, they returned
down the lake without delay. This encounter was the first act of that
savage drama which so long desolated New France, and threatened it with
entire destruction.
Six years later, in the summer of 1615, another party landed on the Isle
La Motte. It was made up of a missionary of the Recollect Order and his
escort of Indians in two bark canoes. The grandfather of our narrator
was one of these. They remained a day or two on the island, and the
missionary offered the Christian sacrifice for the first time within the
territory now embraced by the State of Vermont.[97]
The object of his journey was to visit scattered bands of hunters who
were encamped along the eastern shore of the lake and its vicinity, at
different points in the valley of Lake Champlain.
Leaving the Isle La Motte, they steered for the mouth of the Missisque
River, which they navigated up to the first falls, where the village
of Swanton now stands. Here they found a flourishing encampment, and
remained some days for the purpose of instructing the Indians in the
truths of Christianity. The missionary found that some dim reports of the
Christian teachers had preceded him, and prepared the way for his work,
the success of which encouraged and consoled him.
From that place they proceeded on foot for some miles to the base of
a line of hills, sketched by the narrator, and corresponding to those
east of St. Alban’s. Here they also remained several days, the reverend
father toiling early and late in the duties of his vocation. He was now
surrounded by a crowd of eager listeners; for not only did his former
audience accompany him, but a goodly number from the surrounding hills
and from Bellamaqueau and Maquam Bays--distant three and five miles
respectively--flocked to hear his instructions and to be taught “The
Prayer” revealed to them by the Great Spirit through his servant.
Here they brought to him also the beautiful Indian maiden, of whom
her race cherish the legend that her declining health led her people
to bring her to these hills, hoping the change from the low lands and
damp atmosphere of her home to the bracing mountain air might prove
beneficial. Instead of finding relief, she only declined the more
rapidly, so that she was soon unable to be carried back. She, too, had
heard whispers of holy men who had come to teach her race the path of
heaven, and wistfully she had sighed daily, as she repeated the yearning
aspiration: “Oh! if the Great Spirit would but let me see and listen to
his messenger, I could die in peace!”
The Indians, to this day, tell with what joy she listened to his words;
how eagerly she prayed that she might receive the regenerating waters;
how, when they were poured upon her head, her countenance became bright
with the light of heaven; and how her departure soon after was full of
joy and peace. Her burial-place was made on one of those eastern hills.
It was the first Christian burial for one of her race in Vermont, and her
people thought her intercessions would not fail to bring down blessings
upon all that region.
Pursuing their journey by the trail of those who had preceded them
through the dense wilderness--for our aborigines were skilled in tracing
lines of communication between their different camps with extreme
directness by aid of their close observations of nature--the party
arrived at another camp on the bank of a river discovered by Champlain,
and named by him the Lamoille.
At this place an Indian youth came to the missionary in great distress.
His young squaw was lying at the point of death, and the medicine men
and women could do nothing more for her. Would not “The Prayer” restore
her? Oh! if it would give her back to him, he, with all his family, would
gratefully embrace it! The reverend father went to her, and, when he
found she desired it, baptized her and her new-born infant in preparation
for the death which seemed inevitable. Contrary to all expectation, she
recovered. Her husband and his family, together with her father’s family,
afterwards became joyful believers.
After some days the Indians of that place accompanied the party in
canoes to the lake and along its shores to the mouth of the Winooski
River, which they ascended as far as the first falls. Here they remained
many days, during which time the missionary visited the present site of
Burlington, and held two missions there--one at a camp on the summit of
a hill overlooking the valley of the Winooski as it approaches the lake,
and one near the lake shore.
If Vermonters who are familiar with the magnificent scenery which
surrounds the “queen city” of their State never visit the place without
being filled with new admiration at the infinite variety and beauty
of the pictures it unfolds from every changing point of view, we may
imagine how strangers must be impressed who gaze upon them for the first
time. Not less picturesque, and if possible even more striking, were its
features when, crowned by luxuriant native forests and fanned by gentle
breezes from the lake, it reposed within the embrace of that glorious
amphitheatre of hills, in the undisturbed tranquillity of nature. It was
not strange that the natives were drawn by its unparalleled attractions
to congregate there in such numbers as to require from their reverend
visitor a longer time than he gave to any other place in this series of
missions.
In the course of three months the party had traversed the eastern border
of the lake to the last encampment near its southern extremity. This was
merely a summer camp, as the vicinity of the Iroquois made it unsafe to
remain there longer than through that portion of the season when the
Mohawks and their confederates were too busy with their own pursuits
among the hills of the Adirondacks to give much heed to their neighbors.
At the close of the mission this camp was broken up for that season, and
its occupants joined the reverend father and his party in canoes as far
as the mouth of the Winooski River, whence men were sent to convey them
to the starting-point at Swanton, where their own canoes were left.
On their way thither they lingered for some days on Grand Isle, then,
as now, a vision of loveliness to all admirers of the beautiful, and a
favorite annual resort of the natives for the period during which they
were safe from the attacks of their merciless foes.
At every mission thus opened the missionary promised to return himself,
or send one of his associates, to renew his instructions and minister to
the spiritual wants of his converts. This promise was fulfilled as far as
the limited number of laborers in this vineyard permitted. The brave and
untiring sons of Loyola afterwards entered the field, and proved worthy
successors of the zealous Recollects who first announced the Gospel
message in those wilds.
Our Indian narrator, when he had finished his recital of missionary
labors in this and other regions, would always add with marked emphasis:
“And it is firmly believed by our people, among all their tribes, that
upon every spot where the Christian sacrifice was first offered a
Catholic church will one day be placed.”
There seemed to his Protestant listeners but slight probability of this
prediction ever being fulfilled in Vermont--settled for the most part
by the straitest sect of the Puritans--as there was not then, or until
twenty years from that time, a Catholic priest or church in the State.
Yet at this writing--and the fact has presented itself before us with
startling effect while tracing these imperfect reminiscences--there is at
every point indicated in his narrative a fine church, and in many places
flourishing Catholic schools.
The labors of an eminent servant of God--to whom Vermont cannot be too
grateful--have been particularly blessed on the Isle La Motte, where the
banner of the cross was first unfurled within her territory. A beautiful
church has been erected there with a thriving congregation and school.
Much as remains to be accomplished in this field, when we reflect upon
all that has been done since the first quarter of this XIXth century,
we can see great cause for encouragement and gratitude to Almighty God,
who has not withheld his blessing from the work of his servants of the
earliest and the latest times. “Going on their way, they went and wept,
scattering the seed,” the fruits of which we are now gathering into
sheaves with great joy.
FINDING A LOST CHURCH.
The present age is pre-eminently one of discovery. In spite of the wise
man’s saying, “Nothing under the sun is new,” mankind, wiser in its
own conceit than the wise man, insists upon the newness of its every
production. In Rome a different spirit prevails. While the new is not
entirely neglected, the great delight of many Romans is to find something
old--the older the better. They live so much in the past that they follow
with an eager interest the various steps taken to enlighten them on the
lives and deeds of the men of old, their ancestors on the soil and in the
faith which they profess.
Foremost in the pursuit and discovery of Christian antiquities stands the
Commendatore de Rossi. It has been said that poets are born, not made: De
Rossi’s ability as a Christian archæologist seems to be more the gift of
nature than the result of study. With unwearied industry, with profound
knowledge, with an almost unerring judgment, he finds out and illustrates
the remains of Christian antiquity scattered around Rome--not on the
surface, but in the deeps of the earth. The latest and one of the most
important discoveries he has made forms the subject of the present paper.
Tor Marancia is a name not much known out of Rome, yet it designates
a place which was of some importance in its day. The traveller who
contemplates the works of ancient art collected in the Vatican Museum
cannot fail to be interested in two very beautiful black and white
mosaics which form the floor of the gallery known as the Braccio
Nuovo. Mythological fables and Homeric legends are represented in
these pavements, and they come from Tor Marancia. In the Gallery of
the Candelabra, and in the library of the same museum, a collection of
frescos, busts, statues, and mosaics of excellent workmanship and of
great interest, likewise discovered at Tor Marancia, are exhibited. All
these objects were found at that place in the course of excavations made
there in the reign of Pope Pius VI. In ancient times a villa stood at Tor
Marancia, of which these formed the decorations.
At this spot also is found the entrance to a very extensive catacomb
which contains three floors, and diverges in long, winding ways under
the soil of the Campagna. The catacomb has been called by the name of
S. Domitilla, on evidence found during the excavations made there. This
lady was a member of the Flavian family, which gave three occupants to
the imperial throne--Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. It is a well-known
fact that those early Christians who were blessed with wealth were in
the habit of interring the bodies of their brethren, of saints, and of
martyrs within the enclosure of their villas. Such villas were situated
outside the limits of the city; and hence we find the entrance to every
catacomb beyond the city walls, with the solitary exception of the
catacomb or grottos of the Vatican, and the entrances to all of them are
found in sites ascertained to have been the property of Christians. It
might be easy to multiply instances of this, taking the facts from the
_Acts of the Martyrs,_ wherein the places of sepulture are indicated, and
the names of those who bestowed the last rites upon the dead recorded.
Domitilla, or Flavia Domitilla, as she is sometimes termed, was a niece
of the consul Flavius Clemens, who was cousin of the Emperor Domitian.
She was a Christian, having been baptized by S. Peter; and, after a life
spent in charitable works, amongst which was the burial of the martyrs
“in a catacomb near the Ardeatine Way,” the same of which we write, she
also suffered martyrdom. Her two servants, Nereus and Achilleus, were put
to death previously, and their bodies were placed in this catacomb by
Domitilla.
In 1854, while De Rossi was pursuing his researches in the catacomb
of S. Domitilla, he came upon the foundations of a building which
pierced the second floor of the subterranean cemetery. This was a most
unusual occurrence, and the eminent archæologist eagerly followed up
his discovery. He found a marble slab which recorded the giving up of a
space for burial “Ex indulgentia Flaviæ Domitillæ”--a confirmation of the
proprietorship of the place.
De Rossi naturally concluded that the building thus incorporated in
the Christian cemetery was of great importance. The _loculi_, or
resting-places of the dead, were very large, which indicates great
antiquity; the inscriptions likewise were of a very early date; and
_sarcophagi_ adorned with lions’ heads, marble columns overturned, and
other signs, led the discoverer to the conclusion that he had come upon
the foundations of a church constructed within this cemetery. In the
course of his excavations he had penetrated into the open air, and found
himself in a hollow depression formed by the falling in of the surface.
Amongst other objects discovered were four marble slabs containing
epitaphs furnished with consular dates of the years 335, 380, 399, and
406; and also a form of contract by which the right of burial in the
edifice was sold. The proprietor of the land above the cemetery opposed
the continuance of the excavations, and the discoverer, obliged to
withdraw, covered up the materials already found with earth, and turned
his attention to other recently-discovered objects in another place.
Twenty years after, in 1874, Monsignor de Merode purchased the land
overlying the catacomb and church, and the excavations were again
undertaken under most favorable circumstances. In vain did the Commission
of Sacred Archæology, under De Rossi’s guidance, seek for the four marble
columns and the two beautiful _sarcophagi_ that had been seen there
twenty years before. The proprietor is supposed to have carried them
away. But they found instead the floor of the church or basilica, with
its three naves, the bases of the four columns, the apse, the place where
the altar stood, and the space occupied by the episcopal chair behind
the altar. The basilica is as large as that of San Lorenzo beyond the
walls. The left aisle is sixty feet long by thirteen broad; the central
nave is twenty-four feet broad; and the right aisle, which is not yet
entirely unearthed, is considered to be of the same breadth as the first
mentioned; the greatest depth of the apse is fifteen feet. “The church,”
says De Rossi, “is of gigantic proportions for an edifice constructed in
the bowels of the earth and at the deep level of the second floor of a
subterranean cemetery.”
Here, then, was a basilica or church discovered in the midst of a
catacomb. That the latter belonged to Flavia Domitilla was well known;
and yet another proof, which illustrates archæological difficulties and
the method of overcoming them, was found here. It was a broken slab of
marble containing a portion of an inscription:
......RVM
.....ORVM
(*)
and having the image of an anchor at the point(*). It was concluded
that the anchor was placed at an equal distance from both ends of the
inscription, and the discoverer, with the knowledge he already has of the
place, supplied the letters which he considered wanting to the completion
of the inscription, and thus produced the words,
SEPVLCRVM
FLAVIORVM
*
(sepulchre of the Flavii). This reading is very probably the right one,
and its probability is greatly strengthened by the position of the
anchor, since the full inscription, as here shown, leaves that sign still
in the centre.
But to find the name borne by these ruins when the building of which
they are the sole remnants was fresh and new presented a task to their
discoverer. It was necessary to seek in ancient works--pontifical books
and codices--for some account of a basilica on the Ardeatine Way.
In the life of S. Gregory the Great it is related that this pontiff
delivered one of his homilies “in the cemetery of S. Domitilla on the
Ardeatine Way, at the Church of S. Petronilla.” The pontifical books and
codices, although they differ in details--some saying in the cemetery
of Domitilla, and others in that of Nereus and Archilleus, which is
the same place under another name--agree in the principal fact. On the
small remnant of plaster remaining on the wall of the apse an unskilled
hand had traced a _graffito_, or drawing scratched on the plaster with
a pointed instrument, somewhat resembling those found on the walls of
Pompeii. This _graffito_ represents a bishop, vested in episcopal robes,
seated in a chair, in the act of delivering a discourse. This rude
sketch of a bishop so occupied, taken in conjunction with the fact that
S. Gregory did here deliver one of his homilies, is a link in the chain
of evidence which identifies the ruin with the ancient basilica of S.
Petronilla.
But a still more convincing testimony was forthcoming. A large fragment
of marble, containing a portion of what appeared to have been a long
inscription, was found in the apse. There were but few complete words in
this fragment, and these were chiefly the termination of lines in what
seemed to have been a metrical composition. Odd words, selected at random
from a poem, standing alone, devoid of preceding or succeeding words,
might not seem to furnish very rich materials even to an archæologist.
These wandering words were, however, recognized to be the terminal words
of a poem or eulogium written by Pope Damasus in honor of the martyrs
Nereus and Achilleus. Now the connection between this metrical eulogium
and the basilica was to be sought for. In the Einsiedeln Codex the place
where this poem was to be seen is stated to have been the sepulchre of
SS. Nereus and Achilleus, on the Appian Way, at S. Petronilla. The poem,
or rather this fragment of it, being found at this sepulchre, it was
natural to conclude that the church was that of S. Petronilla. The Appian
Way is the great high-road from which the Ardeatine Way branches off near
this spot.
Again, the basilica of S. Petronilla was frequented by pilgrims from
many nations in the VIIth century. Among these were Gauls, Germans, and
Britons. In their itineraries of the martyrs’ sepulchres in Rome, and in
the collection of the metrical epigraphs written at these places, it is
proved that the original name of this church was that of S. Petronilla.
“Near the Ardeatine Way is the Church of S. Petronilla,” say these old
documents, and they likewise inform us that S. Nereus and S. Achilleus
and S. Petronilla herself are buried there: “Juxta viam Ardeatinam
ecclesia est S. Petronillæ; ibi quoque S. Nereus et S. Achilleus sunt et
ipsa Petronilla sepulti.”
A second fragment of the slab containing the metrical composition
of Pope Damasus has since been found, and this goes to confirm the
testimony furnished by the former fragment. In the following copy of
the inscription the capital letters on the right-hand side are those
on the fragment first discovered; those on the left belong to the
recently-discovered portion:
“NEREUS ET ACHILLEUS MARTYRES.
“Militiæ nomen dederant sævumQ gerebant
Officium pariter spectantes jussA TYRanni
Præceptis pulsante metu serviRE PARati
Mira fides rerum subito posueRE FVRORem
COnversi fugiunt ducis impia castrA RELINQVVNT
PROiiciunt clypeos faleras telAQ. CRVENTA
CONFEssi gaudent Christi portaRE TRIVMFOS
CREDITe per Damasum possit quid GLORIA
CHRISTI.”
The date of the church was likewise ascertained. It is known that Pope
Damasus, the great preserver of the martyrs’ graves, would never allow
the Christian cemeteries to be disturbed for the purpose of building
a church therein; and although he himself strongly desired that his
remains should repose in one of these sacred places by the side of his
predecessors, he abandoned this desire rather than remove the sacred
ashes of the dead. It may naturally be concluded, then, that this church
was built after his day--he died in 384--as were the churches of S.
Agnes, S. Lawrence, and S. Alexander, all of which are beyond the city
walls and built in catacombs. The catacombs under the Church of S.
Petronilla showed an inscription bearing the date of 390, and in the
church itself a monumental slab with the date of 395 has been found. It
is thus almost certain that between the highest date found _under_, and
the lowest date found _in_, the church--that is, between the years 390
and 395--the basilica of S. Petronilla was constructed.
For about three centuries and a half this church was well frequented.
We have records of gifts sent to it, precious vestments, etc., by Pope
Gregory III., who reigned from 715 to 741. But in 755 the Longobards
came down upon Rome; they desecrated the churches and cemeteries around
the city, and then began the siege of Rome. After peace was made, the
pontiff of the period, Paul I., transferred the relics and remains of
the saints to safer custody, and the Church of S. Petronilla became
deserted. From unmistakable signs it seems that this desertion was
conducted in a most regular manner, and that it was closed and despoiled
of its precious objects. The door which entered the left aisle was found
walled up; the altar, the seats of the choir, the episcopal chair, and
the ambons or marble pulpits ware all removed and transported elsewhere.
The floor of the church, so far below the level of the surrounding
soil, formed a resting-place for the water which drained through the
neighboring lands after rains had fallen, and this undoubtedly formed
the strongest reason for the abandonment of S. Petronilla. Nothing was
left in it but _sarcophagi_ and sepulchres, the pavements with their
marble epitaphs--so valuable to-day in revealing history--some columns
with their beautifully-carved capitals, which time or an earthquake has
overturned and hidden within the dark bosom of the earth for more than a
thousand years.
The hundred pilgrims who came from America, with a hundred new-found
friends, assembled on the 14th of June, 1874, to pray in that disentombed
old church. They had come from a world unknown and undreamt of by the
pilgrims who had formerly knelt within these walls; and as they looked
around on the wide and desolate Campagna, and on the monument of Cecilia
Metella shining in the distance white and perfect, in spite of the
nineteen centuries that have passed away since it received its inmate,
and at the blue, changeless sky overhead, and then turned their eyes upon
the church, decorated that morning with festoons of green branches and
gay flowers, the same as it may have been on other festive occasions a
thousand years ago, they may have felt that time has effected almost as
little change in the works of man as in those of nature, and that all
things in Rome partake of Rome’s eternity.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
LE CULTE CATHOLIQUE OU EXPOSITION DE LA FOI DE L’EGLISE
ROMAINE SUR LE CULTE DU AUX SAINTS ET A LEURS RELIQUES, A
LA BIENHEUREUSE VIERGE MARIE, AUX IMAGES, etc., en réponse
aux objections du Protestantisme, suivie d’une dissertation
historique et critique sur le celibat du clergé. Par l’Abbé
Louis-Nazaire Bégin, Docteur en Théologie, Professor à la
Faculté de Théologie de l’Université Laval. Quebec: Typographie
d’Augustin Cote et Cie. 1875.
_Le Culte Catholique_ is another valuable addition to controversial
literature, by the author of _The Bible and the Rule of Faith_.
It is true that the days of controversy seem to be drawing to a close.
The Greek schism still holds itself aloof in sullen isolation; but the
controversy is exhausted, and all that is left of a church has become the
mere unfruitful appanage of a northern despotism.
As to Protestantism, it never had any positive existence as a confession.
Three hundred years have exhausted its theological pretensions. As a
religion it has ceased to exist, and it lies buried beneath the weight of
its own negations. The only formidable enemies of the church now are the
disowners both of Christ and God, and they seek her destruction because
they know that she alone offers an insuperable obstacle to the universal
atheism which they hope to bring about.
Under such circumstances works like Dr. Bégin’s are chiefly useful for
the information of Catholics, and for the support they render to their
faith.
_Le Culte Catholique_ is, the writer tells us, “an exposition of the
faith of the Roman Church in the matters of the worship of the saints and
of their relics, of the blessed Virgin Mary, of images, etc., in reply
to the objections of Protestantism, followed by a historical and critical
dissertation on the celibacy of the clergy.” On these trite subjects
little that is new can be said. But the work before us is a terse and
lucid summary of Catholic teaching on the above points.
It is the object of the society of Freemasons to effect the universal
deification, the rejection, that is, of the belief in any existence
higher than the human being, and in any superiority of one man over
another. For this they find it convenient to support the foolish
Protestant objection to a splendid ritual and costly churches, on the
ground that “God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him
in spirit and in truth.” Dr. Bégin quotes the following telling passage
from a contemporary writer in answer to this frivolous objection:
“I know the old tirades about the temple of nature. No doubt the starry
vault of heaven is a sublime dome; but no worship exists which is
celebrated in the open air. A special place of meeting is required for
collective adoration, because our religious sociability urges us to
gather together for prayer, as it were to make a common stock of our joys
and griefs. Besides, should the time come when we shall have nothing
but the cupola of heaven to shelter our religious assemblies, it would
require a considerable amount of courage to betake ourselves thither,
especially in winter. And the philosophers who find our cathedrals
so damp would not be the most intrepid against the inclemency of the
sanctuary of nature. Thus do great errors touch on the ridiculous.
Reasoning begins their refutation; a smile ends it.”
The second chapter is an admirable exposition of the special worship
(_hyperdulia_) paid to the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the course of which
he shows triumphantly that the definition of her Immaculate Conception
was no new doctrine, but a mere definite and dogmatic statement of a
doctrine which had been all along held implicitly in the church. The
following simile, illustrative of this argument, appears to us to be
worth quoting: “Modern science, which is daily making such extraordinary
progress, discovers, ever and anon, fresh stars, which seem to float
in the most distant depths of space, which become more bright as they
are more attentively observed, and which end by becoming stars of
continually-increasing splendor. These stars are not of recent date;
they are not new; they are only perceived. Something analogous takes
place in the heavens of the church on the subject of certain truths of
our faith. Their light reveals itself and develops by degrees. Sometimes
the shock of controversy illuminates them. Then comes a definition to
invest them with fresh splendor. But in receiving this supplement of
light, destined to make them better understood by the faithful, they lose
nothing of their proper nature; their essence is not in the slightest
degree changed; only our minds appropriate them with more facility.”
FLOWERS FROM THE GARDEN OF THE VISITATION; or, Lives of Several
Religious of that Order. Translated from the French. Baltimore:
Kelly, Piet & Co. 1875.
To those who have attempted to form an adequate conception of the
charitable and ascetic spirit, the simple record of these saintly lives
must have a wonderful fascination. To those, even, who are wholly
absorbed in a life of pleasure it will at least possess the merit of a
new sensation, if they can forget the silent reproof which such examples
convey.
It affords matter of encouragement in these days of combined luxury
and destitution to look over the history of those--many of whom were
delicately reared--who left all for God, content to do whatsoever he
appointed them to do, and to submit to extraordinary mortifications for
his sake. The work embraces six brief biographies of Visitation Nuns
eminent for their self-sacrificing labors for the moral and intellectual
education of their charges, and in other good and charitable offices.
Their names, even, may be quite new to English-speaking readers, but that
fact is all the more in keeping with their hidden lives. We have said
enough to indicate the general character of the volume.
JOHN DORRIEN: A novel. By Julia Kavanagh. New York: D. Appleton
& Co. 1875.
The writer succeeds, in the very opening chapter, in so portraying
the character of a child as to make it a living breathing reality
to the reader. The story of his humble life in childhood and his
struggles and trials in later years is told without any attempt at
fine writing--indeed, all the characters are simply and well drawn,
and retain their individuality to the end. The heroine, neglected in
childhood, and without any guide in matters of faith, is easily persuaded
by a suitor that religion is contrary to reason; and thus, left to her
own unaided judgment, and notwithstanding her innate love of truth,
soon finds herself entangled in a web of deceit and hypocrisy. She only
escapes the unhappiness which such a course entails by forsaking it.
The moral of the tale (if that is not an obsolete term) is what
the reader would naturally infer--the necessity of early religious
instruction, and the advantage, even in this life, of a belief in
revealed truth. We are glad to note the absence of the faults which
disfigure much of the imaginative literature of the day, not excepting,
we are sorry to say, that which emanates from the writer’s own sex. We
see no attempt to give false views of life, or to undermine the moral and
religious principles of the reader; on the contrary, there is reason to
infer much that is positively good, though not so definitely stated as we
should have liked.
THE BIBLE AND THE RULE OF FAITH. By the Abbé Louis-Nazaire
Bégin, Doctor of Theology, Theological Professor in the
University of Laval. Translated from the French by G. M. Ward
[Mrs. Pennée].
Protestantism is well-nigh defunct. It is in its last throes. It has not
sufficient vitality left to care for its own doctrines, such as they
are. As a religion it has almost ceased to exist. Disobedience to the
faith has been succeeded by indifference; indifference by the hatred of
Christ. Its rickety old doctrines, whose folly has been exposed over and
over again thousands of times, have quietly tumbled out of existence.
Protestants themselves have almost forgotten them, and certainly do not
care enough about them to defend them. Paganism has returned--paganism in
its last stage of sceptical development. We have to contend now for the
divinity of Christ and the existence of a God. The Bible and the rule of
faith are up amongst the lumber.
Yet it may be--as the writer of this work asserts; we much doubt
it, however--that there are still “many poor souls in the bosom of
Protestantism a prey to the anguish of doubt.” To such the Abbé Bégin’s
treatise on the rule of faith may be of the utmost service. The argument
is extremely terse and lucid. In short, were the minds of Protestant
fanatics open to reason, it could not fail to convince them of the
unreasoning folly of their notions about the Bible being the one only
rule of faith.
The first part of this work treats of the rule of faith in general, and
proves, amongst other things, that such a rule must be sure, efficient,
and perpetual to put an end to controversies.
The second part exhibits the logical impossibility of the Protestant rule
of faith, remote and proximate. That is to say, that it is impossible for
the unexplained text of the Bible to be a sure, efficient, and perpetual
rule of faith, and for an immediate inspiration of its meaning to
individuals by the Holy Ghost to be its means of explanation.
The third part proves very exhaustively that the Catholic rule of faith
is the only possible sure, efficient, and perpetual one; namely, Holy
Scripture, the remote rule, and the teaching church, the proximate one.
To any souls “in the bosom of Protestism” who are “a prey to the anguish
of doubt,” if indeed there be such, we cordially recommend this treatise.
Its tone is kind and gentle, its reasoning irresistible, and, with
the blessing of God, is able to put an end to all their doubts on the
fundamental question as to the true rule of faith.
PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. By Cornelia Knight and Thomas Raikes.
New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1875.
This is another of the pleasant “Bric-à-Brac series,” edited by Richard
Henry Stoddard. Miss Knight was that nondescript kind of being known as
a “lady companion” to the Princess Charlotte of Wales. Her position gave
her peculiar facilities for enjoying the privilege, so dear to certain
hearts, of a peep behind the scenes of a royal household. Never having
been married, she had plenty of time for jotting down her notes and
observations on men, women, and things. Many of the men and women she met
were famous in their way and in their time. As might be expected, there
is much nonsense in her observations, mingled with pleasant glimpses of a
kind of life that has now passed away. Mr. Raikes’ journal is similar in
character to that of Miss Knight, with the advantage or disadvantage, as
may be considered, of having been written by a man.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXII., No. 129.--DECEMBER, 1875.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev. I. T.
HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
MR. GLADSTONE AND MARYLAND TOLERATION.
It was supposed that Mr. Gladstone had been so triumphantly refuted, as
a polemic, that he would take a prudent refuge in silence. At a moment
when neighboring nations were rent with religious dissensions, and when
England needed repose from, rather than fuel added to, her internal
agitations, a statesman and ex-premier of the British Empire assumes the
_rôle_ of a religious agitator and accuser, and startles, as well as
offends, the public sense of appropriateness by his useless and baseless
indictment against the Catholic Church, to which England owes all that
is glorious in her constitution and in her history; against English
Catholics in particular, his fellow-subjects, who of all others, by their
loyalty and Christian faith and virtues, can preserve the liberties
and the institutions of their country, now threatened alike by infidel
corruption, Protestant indifference, and communistic malice; and against
that saintly and illustrious pontiff whose hand is only raised to bless,
whose lips breathe unfaltering prayer, and whose voice and pen have never
ceased to announce and defend the eternal truths of religion, to uphold
morality, and to refute the crying errors and evils of our times. The
unanswerable refutations which Mr. Gladstone’s attacks elicited from
Cardinal Manning, Bishops Ullathorne and Vaughan, Drs. Newman and Capel,
and Canon Neville, not to speak of the Italian work of Mgr. Nardi and the
rebukes administered by the periodical press, had, it was believed, even
by impartial Protestants, effectually driven this new champion of the old
No-popery party in England from the field of polemics. But, like all new
recruits, the ex-premier seems incapable of realizing defeat, or perhaps
is anxious, at least, to retire with the honors of war.
Not content with the serial publication of his three tracts, he has just
now republished them in one volume, with a _Preface_, under the title
of _Rome and the Newest Fashions in Religion_--a title as unbecoming
the gravity of his subjects as it is unsupported by the contents of
the work. The preface to the republication not only reiterates his
accusations on all points, but the author, not satisfied with his new
part as theologian, essays the _rôle_ of historical critic, and thus
gives prominence to a historical question of deep interest and of
especial importance to the Catholics of this country.
The same _animus_ which inspired Mr. Gladstone’s attacks against the
church, against his Catholic fellow-countrymen, and against the most
august and venerable personage in Christendom, has also induced him to
deny to the Catholic founders of Maryland the honorable renown, accorded
to them heretofore by historians with singular unanimity, of having, when
in power, practised religious toleration towards all Christian sects, and
secured freedom of conscience, not only by their unwavering action and
practice, but also by giving it the stability and sanctions of statute
law. This is certainly the only phase in this celebrated controversy upon
which it remains for Mr. Gladstone to be answered.
His Eminence Cardinal Manning, in _The Vatican Decrees in their bearing
on Civil Allegiance_, at page 88 (New York edition), writes:
“For the same reasons I deplore the haste, I must say the
passion, which carried away so large a mind to affirm or to
imply that the church of this day would, if she could, use
torture, and force, and coercion in matters of religious
belief.… In the year 1830 the Catholics of Belgium were in
a vast majority, but they did not use their political power
to constrain the faith or conscience of any man. The ‘Four
Liberties’ of Belgium were the work of Catholics. This is the
most recent example of what Catholics would do if they were in
possession of power. But there is one more ancient and more
homely for us Englishmen. It is found at a date when the old
traditions of the Catholic Church were still vigorous in the
minds of men.… If the modern spirit had any share in producing
the constitution of Belgium, it certainly had no share in
producing the constitution of Maryland. Lord Baltimore, who
had been Secretary of State under James I., in 1633 emigrated
to the American plantations, where, through Lord Stafford’s
influence, he had obtained a grant of land.… They named their
new country Maryland, and there they settled. The oath of the
governor was in these terms: ‘I will not, by myself or any
other, directly or indirectly, molest any person professing to
believe in Jesus Christ, for or in respect of religion.’ Lord
Baltimore invited the Puritans of Massachusetts--who, like
himself, had renounced their country for conscience’ sake--to
come into Maryland. In 1649, when active persecution had sprung
up again in England, the Council of Maryland, on the 21st
of April, passed this statute; ‘And whereas the forcing of
the conscience in matters of religion hath frequently fallen
out to be of dangerous consequence in the commonwealth where
it has been practised, and for the more quiet and peaceable
government of the province, and the better to preserve mutual
love and amity among the inhabitants, no person within the
province professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall be
anyways troubled, molested, or discountenanced for his or her
religion, or in the free exercise thereof.’ The Episcopalians
and Protestants fled from Virginia into Maryland. Such was the
commonwealth founded by a Catholic upon the broad moral law I
have here laid down--that faith is an act of the will, and that
to force men to profess what they do not believe is contrary to
the law of God, and that to generate faith by force is morally
impossible.”
Mr. Gladstone, in his _Vaticanism_, page 96, replies to the above as
follows:
“It appears to me that Archbishop Manning has completely
misapprehended the history of the settlement of Maryland and
the establishment of toleration there for all believers in the
Holy Trinity. It was a wise measure, for which the two Lords
Baltimore, father and son, deserve the highest honor. But the
measure was really defensive; and its main and very legitimate
purpose plainly was to secure the free exercise of the Roman
Catholic religion. Immigration into the colony was by the
charter free; and only by this and other popular provisions
could the territory have been extricated from the grasp of its
neighbors in Virginia, who claimed it as their own. It was
apprehended that the Puritans would flood it, as they did; and
it seemed certain that but for this excellent provision the
handful of Roman Catholic founders would have been unable to
hold their ground. The facts are given in Bancroft’s _History
of the United States_, vol. i., chap. vii.”
Again, in his _Preface_ to _Rome and the Newest Fashions in Religion_,
page viii., Mr. Gladstone writes:
“It has long been customary to quote the case of Maryland in
proof that, more than two centuries ago, the Roman Catholic
Church, where power was in its hands, could use it for the
purposes of toleration. Archbishop Manning has repeated the
boast, and with very large exaggeration.
“I have already shown from Bancroft’s _History_ that in the
case of Maryland there was no question of a merciful use of
power towards others, but simply of a wise and defensive
prudence with respect to themselves--that is to say, so far as
the tolerant legislation of the colony was the work of Roman
Catholics. But it does not appear to have been their work.
By the fourth article of the charter we find that no church
could be consecrated there except according to the laws of the
church at home. The tenth article guaranteed to the colonists
generally ‘all privileges, franchises, and liberties of this
our kingdom of England.’ It was in 1649 that the Maryland
Act of Toleration was passed, which, however, prescribed the
punishment of death for any one who denied the Trinity. Of the
small legislative body which passed it, two-thirds appear to
have been Protestant, the recorded numbers being sixteen and
eight respectively. The colony was open to the immigration of
Puritans and all Protestants, and any permanent and successful
oppression by a handful of Roman Catholics was altogether
impossible. But the colonial act seems to have been an echo
of the order of the House of Commons at home, on the 27th of
October, 1645, that the inhabitants of the Summer Islands, and
such others as shall join themselves to them, ‘shall without
any molestation or trouble have and enjoy the liberty of their
consciences in matters of God’s worship’; and of a British
ordinance of 1647.
“Upon the whole, then, the picture of Maryland legislation is
a gratifying one; but the historic theory which assigns the
credit of it to the Roman Church has little foundation in fact.”
Let us first test Mr. Gladstone’s accuracy and consistency as a
historical critic. He begins by alleging that the Maryland Toleration Act
was a measure of defensive prudence in the interests of the Catholics
themselves, and that “its main and very legitimate purpose plainly was to
secure the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion.” He then asserts
that this act of toleration was not the work of the Catholics at all, but
of a Protestant majority in the legislature which passed it. We have,
then, here presented the extraordinary picture of an alleged Protestant
legislature passing a law which was really intended to protect Catholics
against Protestant ascendency and apprehended Protestant persecution, and
whose “main and very legitimate purpose was to secure the free exercise
of the Roman Catholic religion.” Surely, the Protestants of that day were
liberal and generous, especially as it was an age of persecution, when
not only were Catholics hunted down both in England and her Virginia
and New England colonies, but even Protestants of different sects were
relentlessly persecuting each other. And in what proper sense can _they_
be said to have been Protestants with whom it was “_a very legitimate
purpose_” to legislate in the express interests of Roman Catholics?
Mr. Gladstone also states that the Toleration Act was passed in the
apprehension of an influx of Puritans, and to protect the colony “from
the grasp of its neighbors in Virginia”; whereas his favorite author,
Mr. Bancroft, informs Mr. Gladstone that Lord Baltimore invited both
the Episcopalians of Virginia and the Puritans of New England into
his domains, offering a gift of lands as an inducement; and it is a
historical fact that numbers of them accepted the invitation.
Again, Mr. Gladstone, while apparently treating the Toleration Act as a
Catholic measure, animadverts with evident disapproval on that feature
in it which “prescribed the punishment of death for any one who denied
the Trinity,” and then immediately he claims that the legislature which
passed the act was a Protestant body--“two-thirds,” he writes, “appear
to have been Protestants”--thus imposing upon his Protestant friends the
odium of inflicting death for the exercise of conscience and religious
belief; and that, too, not upon Papists, as they were not included in the
punishment.
Mr. Gladstone, in _The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil
Allegiance_ (page 83), expressing no doubt the common sentiments of
Protestants since the time of Luther and Henry VIII., uses these
irreverent words in regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary, that peerless and
immaculate Lady whom four-fifths of the Christian world venerate as the
Mother of God:
“The sinlessness of the Virgin Mary and the personal
infallibility of the Pope are the characteristic dogmas of
modern Romanism.… Both rest on pious fiction and fraud; both
present a refined idolatry by clothing a pure humble woman and
a mortal sinful man with divine attributes. The dogma of the
Immaculate Conception, which exempts the Virgin Mary from sin
and guilt, perverts Christianism into Marianism.… The worship
of a woman is virtually substituted for the worship of Christ.”
And yet with such sentiments, in which doubtless the Protestants of
Maryland in 1649 concurred, he attributes to, and claims for, those
Protestants who, he says, constituted two-thirds of the Maryland Colonial
Legislature in 1649, the passage of a law which enacted “that whosoever
shall use or utter any reproachful words or speeches concerning the
Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Saviour, … shall for the first
offence forfeit five pounds sterling, or, if not able to pay, be publicly
whipped and imprisoned during pleasure, etc.; for the second offence, ten
pounds, etc.; and for the third shall forfeit all his lands and goods,
and be banished from the province.”
The following anecdote, related by the Protestant Bozman,[98] is quite
pertinent to our subject and to our cause:
“And in the time of the Long Parliament when the differences
between the Lord Baltimore and Colonell Samuel Matthews, as
agent for the colony of Virginia, were depending before a
committee of that parliament for the navy, that clause in the
sayd law, concerning the Virgin Mary, was at that committee
objected as an exception against his lordship; whereupon a
worthy member of the sayd committee stood up and sayd, that he
wondered that any such exception should be taken against his
lordship; for (says hee) doth not the Scripture say, that all
generations shall call her blessed? (The author here cites in
the margin, ‘Lu. i. 48.’) And the committee insisted no more on
that exception.”
The authorities relied upon by Mr. Gladstone, besides Bancroft, whom
we shall presently refer to, are _Maryland Toleration_, by the Rev.
Ethan Allen, and _Maryland not a Catholic Colony_, by E. D. N. The
former is a pamphlet of sixty-four pages addressed by the author, a
Protestant minister, to his brethren in the ministry in 1855, is purely
a sectarian tract, hostile to every Catholic view and interest, and
partisan in spirit and in matter. The latter is a few pages of printed
matter, consisting of three newspaper articles published last year in
the _Daily Pioneer_ of St. Paul, Minnesota, and recently reprinted in
the _North-Western Chronicle_ of the same place, the editor of which
states that the author of the letters is the Rev. Edward D. Neill, also
a Protestant minister, and president of Macalester College. The letters
of “E. D. N.” were sharply and ably replied to by Mr. William Markoe,
formerly an Episcopal minister, now a member of the Catholic Church. The
letters of “E. D. N.” are more sectarian than historical, and cannot
be quoted in a controversy in which such names as Chalmers, Bancroft,
McSherry, Bozman, etc., figure. The attack of “E. D. N.” on the personal
character of Lord Baltimore is enough to condemn his effort.
But Mr. Gladstone’s principal author is Bancroft, from whose pages
he claims to have shown that “in the case of Maryland there was _no
question_ of a merciful use of power towards others, but _simply_ of
a wise and defensive prudence with respect to themselves.” Motives of
_self-interest_ are thus substituted for those of _benevolence_ and
_mercy_. If this were correctly stated, why does Mr. Gladstone state that
the Act of Toleration was a measure “for which the two Lords Baltimore,
father and son, deserve the highest honor”? But our task is now to
inquire how far his author sustains Mr. Gladstone in denying to the
Catholics of Maryland, who enacted religious toleration, all motives of
benevolence and mercy.
Mr. Bancroft, on the contrary, asserts that the “new government [of
Maryland] was erected on a _foundation_ as extraordinary as its results
were _benevolent_.”[99] In speaking of Lord Baltimore, the founder of
Maryland, its chief statesman and law-giver, he extols his _moderation_,
_sincerity of character_, and _disinterestedness_,[100] and proceeds to
say:
“Calvert deserves to be ranked among the most wise and
_benevolent_ law-givers of all ages. He was the first in the
history of the Christian world to seek for religious security
and peace by the practice of justice, and not by the exercise
of power; to plan the establishment of popular institutions
with the enjoyment of liberty of conscience; to advance the
career of civilization by recognizing the rightful equality of
all Christian sects. The asylum of Papists was the spot where,
in a remote corner of the world, on the banks of rivers which,
as yet, had hardly been explored, the _mild forbearance_ of a
proprietary adopted religious freedom as the _basis_ of the
state.”[101]
Referring to the act of taking possession of their new homes in Maryland
by the Catholic pilgrims, the same author says, thereby “religious
liberty obtained a home, its only home in the wide world, at the humble
village which bore the name of St. Mary’s.”[102] And speaking of the
progress of the colony, he further says: “Under the _mild_ institutions
and munificence of Baltimore the dreary wilderness soon bloomed with
swarming life and activity of prosperous settlements; the Roman
Catholics who were oppressed by the laws of England were sure to find a
peaceful asylum in the quiet harbors of the Chesapeake; and there, too,
Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance.”[103] Such,
in fine, is the repeated language of an author whom Mr. Gladstone refers
to in proof of his assertion that toleration in Maryland was _simply_ a
measure of self-defence.
Chalmers bears the following testimony to the same point: “He” (Lord
Baltimore) “_laid the foundation_ of his province upon the broad _basis_
of security to property and of freedom of religion, granting, in absolute
fee, fifty acres of land to every emigrant; establishing Christianity
according to the old common law, of which it is a part, without allowing
pre-eminence to any particular sect. The wisdom of his choice soon
converted a dreary wilderness into a prosperous colony.”[104]
And Judge Story, with the history of the colony from its beginning and
the charter before him, adds the weight of judicial approval in the
following words: “It is certainly very honorable to the liberality and
public spirit of the proprietary that he should have introduced into his
_fundamental_ policy the doctrine of general toleration and equality
among Christian sects (for he does not appear to have gone further),
and have thus given the earliest example of a legislator inviting his
subjects to the free indulgence of religious opinion. This was anterior
to the settlement of Rhode Island, and therefore merits the enviable rank
of being the first recognition among the colonists of the glorious and
indefeasible rights of conscience.”[105]
But there is another view, clearly sustained by an important and certain
chain of facts, which has never occurred to the historical writers on
Maryland toleration, at least in this connection, though they give the
facts upon which the view is based, and which wholly destroys the theory
of Mr. Gladstone and his authorities. The latter may dispute in regard to
the merits and motives of the statute of 1649, but they do not touch the
real question. It is an incontestable fact that the religious toleration
which historians have so much extolled in the Catholic colonists and
founders of Maryland did not originate with, or derive its existence
from, that law of 1649, but, on the contrary, it existed long anterior
to, and independent of, it. This great feature in the Catholic government
of Maryland had been established by the Catholic lord-proprietary, his
lieutenant-governor, agents, and colonists, and faithfully practised for
fifteen years prior to the Toleration Act of 1649. From 1634 to 1649 it
had been enforced with unwavering firmness and protected with exalted
benevolence. This important fact is utterly ignored by Mr. Gladstone and
his authors, the Rev. Ethan Allen and the Rev. Edward D. Neill, but the
facts related by Bancroft, and indeed by all historians, prove it beyond
a question. Bancroft records that the very “_foundations_” of the colony
were laid upon the “_basis_” of religious toleration, and throughout the
eulogiums pronounced by him on the religious toleration of Maryland,
which we have quoted above, refers entirely to the period of the fifteen
years preceding the passage of the act of 1649. The Toleration Act was
nothing else than the declaration of the existing state of things and
of the long and cherished policy and practice of the colony--a formal
sanction and statutory enactment of the existing common law of the
province.
Before proceeding to demonstrate this fact, we will briefly examine
how far Mr. Bancroft sustains the theory or views of Mr. Gladstone in
regard to the act itself. After extolling the motives and conduct of the
Catholics of Maryland in establishing religious toleration, as we have
remarked above, during the fifteen years preceding the passage of the
act, Mr. Bancroft refers to that statute in terms of highest praise.
He barely hints at the possibility that a foresight, on the part of
the colonists, of impending dangers to themselves from threatened or
apprehended Protestant ascendency and persecution, might have entered
among the motives which induced them to pass that act; but he nowhere
asserts the fact, nor does he allege anything beyond conjecture for
the possibility of the motive. Indeed, his mode of expressing himself
indicates that, though he thought it possible, his own impression was
that such motive did not suggest in part even the passage of the act; for
he writes: “_As if_, with a foresight of impending danger and an earnest
desire to stay its approach, the Roman Catholics of Maryland, with the
earnest concurrence of their governor and of the proprietary, determined
to place upon their statute-book an act for _the religious freedom which
had ever been sacred on their soil_.” Compare this with the language
of Mr. Gladstone, who excludes every motive but that of self-interest,
and refers to Bancroft in support of his view, but does not quote his
language. Mr. Bancroft, on the other hand, after quoting from the
statute, exclaims, such was “its sublime tenor.”
Mr. Griffith does not agree with the suggestion that a sense of fear or
apprehension entered into the motives of the Maryland lawgivers, and
says: “That this liberty did not proceed from fear of others, on the one
hand, or licentious dispositions in the government, on the other, is
sufficiently evident from the penalties prescribed against blasphemy,
swearing, drunkenness, and Sabbath-breaking, by the preceding sections of
the act, and proviso, at the end, that such exercise of religion did not
molest or conspire against the proprietary or his government.”[106]
Let us now proceed to examine still further whether Maryland was a
Catholic colony, whether it was by Catholics that religious toleration
was established there, and whether it had its origin in the act of 1649
or in the long previous practice and persistent generosity and mercy of
the Catholic rulers of the province. It is true that while the territory
afterwards granted to Lord Baltimore was subject to the Virginia charter,
a settlement of Episcopalians was made on Kent Island; but they were very
few in numbers, always adhered to Virginia rather than to Maryland in
their sympathies, were so turbulent and disloyal that Governor Calvert
had to reduce them by force of arms, and no one has ever pretended that
they founded a State. We will show what relation they had in point of
numbers and political influence to the colony, and that they did not form
even the slightest element of power in the founding of the province.
Maryland was founded alone by the Catholic Lord Baltimore and his
colonists. Such is the voice of history. It is rather disingenuous in the
reverend authors of the pamphlets mentioned by Mr. Gladstone that upon so
flimsy a circumstance they assert that Maryland was not settled first by
Catholics. Their voices are drowned by the concurrent voice of tradition
and of history. It is only the reassertion of the pretensions of these
zealous sectarians by so respectable a person as Mr. Gladstone, and that,
too, in one of the most remarkable controversies of the age, that renders
a recurrence to the historical authorities and their results at all
desirable or necessary.
The colony of Maryland was conceived in the spirit of liberty. It was the
flight of English Catholics from Protestant persecution in their native
country. The state of the penal laws in England against Catholics at this
period is too well known. The zealous Protestant Bozman writes that they
“contained severities enough to keep them [the Catholics] in all due
subjection.”
It was at this hour of their extremest suffering that the Catholics
of England found a friend and leader in Sir George Calvert, who held
important trusts under the governments of James and Charles, and enjoyed
the confidence of his sovereigns and of his country. “In an age when
religious controversy still continued to be active, when increasing
divisions among Protestants were spreading a general alarm, his mind
sought relief from controversy in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church,
and, preferring the avowal of his opinions to the emoluments of office,
he resigned his place and openly professed his conversion.”[107] Even
after this he was advanced to the peerage under the title of Lord
Baltimore--an Irish title--and was appointed one of the principal
secretaries under James I. His positions in the government gave him
not only an acquaintance with American colonization, but an official
connection with it. Of these he now availed himself to provide an asylum
abroad for his fellow-Catholics from the relentless persecution they
were suffering at home. His first effort was to found a Catholic colony
on the shores of Newfoundland. A settlement was begun. Avalon was the
name it received, and twice did Lord Baltimore cross the ocean to visit
his cherished cradle of liberty. Baffled by political difficulties,
the severity of the climate, and an ungenerous soil, he abandoned the
endeavor. That his motive all along was to found a place of refuge for
Catholics from persecution is certain from the time and circumstances
under which the enterprise was undertaken, as well as from the testimony
of historians. Oldmixon says: “This gentleman [Lord Baltimore], being
of the Romish religion, was uneasy at home, and had the same reason to
leave the kingdom as those gentlemen had who went to New England, to
enjoy the liberty of his conscience.”[108] Bozman writes that “by their
[the Puritans’] clamors for a vigorous execution of the laws against
Papists, it became now necessary for them [the Catholics] also to look
about for a place of refuge.”[109] The same writer also refers to a MS.
in the British Museum, written by Lord Baltimore himself, in which this
motive is mentioned. Driven from Avalon by the hardness of the climate,
he visited Virginia with the same view; but hence again he was driven
by religious bigotry and the presentation of an anti-popery oath from
a colony “from which the careful exclusion of Roman Catholics had been
originally avowed as a special object.” His mind, filled with the thought
of founding a place of refuge for Catholics, next turned to the country
beyond the Potomac, which had been embraced originally in the Virginia
charter, but which, upon the cancellation of that charter, had reverted
to the crown. He obtained a grant and charter from the king, so liberal
in its terms that, Griffith says, it became the model for future grants.
The name was changed from Crescentia to that of Maryland, in honor of the
Catholic queen of Charles; but the devout Catholics of the expedition, in
their piety, extended the term _Terra Mariæ_, the Land of Mary, into an
act of devotion and honor to Mary, the Queen of Heaven.
The first Lord Baltimore did not live to see his project carried into
effect; he died on the 25th of April, 1632, was succeeded by his son
Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore, who, as Bancroft says, was the heir of
his _intentions_ no less than of his fortunes; to him was issued the
charter negotiated by his father, bearing date the 15th of June, 1632.
Founded by a Catholic, designed as an asylum for persecuted Catholics,
is it to be supposed that Lord Baltimore and his brother, Governor
Leonard Calvert, who organized and led forth the pilgrims, would be so
inconsistent at this moment of their success as to lose sight of the
main object of the movement, and carry _Protestant_ colonists with whom
to found a _Catholic_ colony? If, as Rev. Edward D. Neill, author of
_Maryland not a Catholic Colony_, says, there were only twenty Catholic
gentlemen in the ship, and three hundred servants, mostly Protestants,
would it have been deemed necessary to carry two Catholic priests
and their assistants along to administer to the souls of so small a
number? In point of fact, the Protestants were so few that they brought
no minister with them, and it was several years before their entire
numbers justified their having either a minister or a place of worship.
The voyage on the _Ark_ and _Dove_ was more like a Catholic pilgrimage
than a secular expedition. The principal parts of the ship (the _Ark_),
says Father White in his _Narrative_, were committed to the protection
of God especially, and to his Most Holy Mother, and S. Ignatius, and
all the guardian angels of Maryland. The vessel was a floating chapel,
an ocean shrine of Catholic faith and devotion, consecrated by the
unbloody sacrifice, and resounding with Latin litanies; its safety from
many a threatened disaster was attributed to the intercession of the
Blessed Virgin and the saints, whose mediation was propitiated by votive
offerings promised and promptly rendered after their safe arrival at St.
Mary’s. The festivals of the saints were faithfully observed throughout
the voyage, the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin was
selected for landing, and the solemn act of taking possession was
according to the Catholic form. Father White thus describes the scene:
“On the day of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Virgin Mary
(March 25), in the year 1634, we celebrated the Mass for the
first time on this island [St. Clement’s]. This had never been
done before in this part of the world. After we had completed
the sacrifice, we took upon our shoulders a great cross which
we had hewn out of a tree, and advancing in order to the
appointed place, with the assistance of the governor and his
associates, and the other Catholics, we erected a trophy to
Christ the Saviour, humbly reciting on our bended knees the
Litanies of the Sacred Cross with great emotion.”[110]
They founded a city, the capital of the colony, and called it St. Mary’s.
A Catholic chapel was subsequently erected there; and this too was
dedicated to S. Mary. The city has passed away, but the little chapel
still stands, preserved alike by Catholic and Protestant hands, as a
monument of the faith and zeal of the Catholic pilgrims of Maryland.
Mr. Griffith, the historian, uniting his voice to that of Bancroft and
other writers, speaking of the object which inspired the settlement
from its inception by Lord Baltimore in England, says: “Out of respect
for their religion they planted the cross, and, after fortifying
themselves, plainly and openly set about to obtain, by the fairest means
in their power, other property and homes, where they should escape the
persecutions of the religious and political reformers of their native
country at that time.”[111]
The church and parish of S. Mary were for many years the headquarters of
the Jesuit missions of Maryland. During the succeeding years prior to
1649 there was a steady influx of Catholics into the colony from England,
as is evident by the land records and other official documents, and by
the fact that the number of Catholic priests required for the settlement
increased from two in 1634 to four priests and one coadjutor prior to
1644. The Catholic strength was also increased by numerous conversions,
as is shown by Father White’s _Narrative_, in which, at page 56, he
relates that, “among the Protestants, nearly all who came over from
England, in this year 1638, and many others, have been converted to the
faith, together with four servants … and five mechanics whom we … have in
the meantime won to God.” So numerous were these conversions, and they
created so great a sensation in England, that measures were taken there
to check them.
That the colony was Catholic in its origin, and so continued until
after the year 1649, when the Toleration Act was passed, has never been
denied, according to our researches, except by Mr. Gladstone and the two
Protestant ministers whom he quotes. Bancroft, writing of the religious
toleration which prevailed in Maryland during this period, always speaks
of it as the work of Catholics. In referring to the original colonists
he adds, “most of them Roman Catholic gentlemen and their servants.”
Even so unfriendly a writer as Bozman says: “The most, if not all, of
them were Catholics.” Chancellor Kent speaks of the colony as “the
Catholic planters of Maryland,” and Judge Story says they were “chiefly
Roman Catholics.” Father White, in his _Narrative_, speaks of the few
Protestants on board the _Ark_ as individuals, and not as a class.
Bozman, alluding to the year 1639, and to “those in whose hands the
government of the province was,” says: “A majority of whom were, without
doubt, Catholics, as well as much the greater number of the colonists.”
Mr. Davis, a Protestant, who drew his information from the official
documents of the colony and State, gives unanswerable proofs of the fact
for which we are contending. We give a single passage from his work on
this point:
“St. Mary’s was the home--the chosen home--of the disciples
of the Roman Church. The fact has been generally received.
It is sustained by the tradition of two hundred years and by
volumes of unwritten testimony; by the records of the courts;
by the proceedings of the privy council; by the trial of
law-cases; by the wills and inventories; by the land-records
and rent-rolls; and by the very names originally given to the
towns and _hundreds_, to the creeks and rivulets, to the tracts
and manors of the county. The state itself bears the name of
a Roman Catholic queen. Of the six _hundreds_ of this small
county, in 1650, five had the prefix of _St._ Sixty tracts and
manors, most of them taken up at a very early period, bear the
same Roman Catholic mark. The creeks and villages, to this
day, attest the widespread prevalence of the same tastes,
sentiments, and sympathies. Not long after the passage of the
act relating to ‘religion,’ the Protestants, it is admitted,
outgrew their Roman Catholic brethren, and in 1689 succeeded
very easily in their attempt to overthrow the proprietary. But
judging from the composition of the juries in 1655, we see no
reason to believe that they then had a majority.”[112]
Mr. Gladstone seems to favor the view that religious toleration in
Maryland was derived from the charter. We are surprised at this, since
“E. D. N.” (Rev. Edward D. Neill), whose pamphlet has furnished the
substance of the entire passage we have quoted from Mr. Gladstone’s
_Preface_, says in his _Maryland not a Roman Catholic Colony_, “The
charter of Maryland granted to Lord Baltimore was not a charter
of religious liberty, but the very opposite.” McSherry, a Catholic
historian, says that “the ecclesiastical laws of England, so far as
related to the consecration and presentation of churches and chapels,
were extended to the colony, but the question of state religion was left
untouched, and therefore within the legislative power of the colonists
themselves.”[113] And Bozman, a Protestant historian, adopts the same
view of the charter, for he regards the “Act for Church Liberties” passed
in 1639, enacting that “Holy Church within this province shall have
all her rights and privileges,” as an attempt to exercise a control of
religion, and says: “We cannot but suppose that it was the intention of
the Catholic government to erect a hierarchy, with an ecclesiastical
jurisdiction, similar to the ancient Church of England before the
Reformation, and to invest it with all its rights, liberties, and
immunities.”[114] The same views are expressed by the same author at
pages 68 and 350 of his history. While civil liberty was guaranteed by
the charter to all within the province, we find no mention of religious
toleration in its provisions. Nor do we find that immigration was made
free by the charter, as alleged by Mr. Gladstone; the provision to which
he refers simply assures to the subjects of England, “transported or
to be transported into the province, all privileges, franchises, and
liberties of this our kingdom of England,” but the decision of the point
as to who should be transplanted or admitted to settle there was left
to the lord proprietary and the provincial legislature. The grant by
the king to Lord Baltimore of all the lands of the province in itself
gave him the full control over immigration, by enabling him to fix the
conditions to the grants of land to colonists, which would have kept out
all except such as the lord proprietary wished to enter.
We think we have shown that the Catholics were in the majority during
the whole period covered by our discussion, and that the charter
left them free to protect themselves from intrusion; that they were,
consequently, all-powerful to perpetuate their numerical preponderance
and control of the government. Why had they not the same motives for
practising intolerance as the Puritans? Their positions, respectively
and relatively, were the same in this particular, and the same reasons
apply to both. No, they were actuated by a different spirit, and guided
by different traditions. They possessed the power, and used it with mercy
and benevolence; not only permitting but inviting Christians of every
shade of opinion to settle in the province, but also offering grants
of land on easy terms, and protecting the settlers from molestation on
account of their religion. If they had not the power to proscribe, why
should Bancroft, Griffith, Chambers, Kent, Story, and nearly all writers
on the subject, have bestowed such encomiums on them for doing what they
could not have refrained from doing? Why extol the toleration enjoined
by Lord Baltimore and proclaimed by Governor Leonard Calvert, and the
subsequently enacted Toleration Act of 1649, if the liberty it enacts was
already secured by the charter of 1632?
It is not necessary for us to go further into this question, since in
either event the honor and credit of religious toleration in Maryland
is due to a Catholic source. If the charter secured it, our answer is
that the charter itself was the work of a Catholic, for Lord Baltimore
is the acknowledged author of that document. “The nature of the document
itself,” says Bancroft, “and concurrent opinion, leave no doubt that it
was penned by the first Lord Baltimore himself, although it was finally
issued for the benefit of his son.”[115] “It was prepared by Lord
Baltimore himself,” says McSherry, “but before it was finally executed
that truly great and good man died, and the patent was delivered to his
son, Cecilius, who succeeded as well to his noble designs as to his
titles and estates.”[116] It will be more than sufficient to add here
that both Mr. Bozman and the Rev. Ethan Allen concede that Lord Baltimore
was the author of the charter.
We propose now to show that the religious toleration which prevailed
in Maryland had its origin in the good-will, generosity, and mercy of
the Catholic lord proprietary and his Catholic government and colony of
Maryland; was practised from the very beginning of the settlement, and
that we are not indebted for it to the Toleration Act of 1649, except
perhaps as a measure by which its provisions were prolonged. Toleration
was the course adopted in organizing the Maryland colony, even in
England and before the landing of the pilgrims. Thus we find that some
Protestants were permitted to accompany the colonists and share equal
rights and protection with their Catholic associates. Father White speaks
of them on board the _Ark_ and _Dove_. The author of _Maryland not a
Catholic Colony_ refers to the fact that “Thomas Cornwallis and Jerome
Hawley, who went out as councillors of the colony, were adherents of the
Church of England,” as evidence in part that Maryland was “not a Catholic
colony.” We take the same fact to show that not only were Protestants
tolerated in the colony from its inception, but were liberally and
generously given a share in its government. The Rev. Ethan Allen relates
a succession of proofs of this fact, though not for that purpose, in
the following passage: “Witness the fact of so large a portion of the
first colonists being Protestants; his invitation to Capt. Fleet; his
invitation to the Puritan colonists of Massachusetts to come and reside
in the colony in 1643; his constituting Col. Stone his governor in
1648, who was a Protestant, and was to bring five hundred colonists;
his admitting the Puritans of Virginia in the same year; and in the
year following erecting a new county for Robert Brooke, a Puritan, and
his colonists.”[117] McSherry says, speaking of the act of possession
on landing in 1634: “Around the rough-hewn cross, on the island of St.
Clement’s, gathered the Catholic and the Protestant, hand in hand,
friends and brothers, equal in civil rights, and secure alike in the free
and full enjoyment of either creed. It was a day whose memory should make
the Maryland heart bound with pride and pleasure.”[118] The same author
says that the Toleration Act of 1649 was passed “to give _additional_
security to the safeguards which Lord Baltimore _had already provided_.”
Bancroft makes religious toleration commence from the first landing
“when the Catholics took possession,” and extend throughout the fourteen
years up to the passage of the act of 1649. He says that “the apologist
of Lord Baltimore could assert that his government, in conformity with
his strict and repeated injunctions, had _never_ given disturbance to any
person in Maryland for matter of religion.”[119] The Rev. Ethan Allen
relates that the Protestants in the colony were allowed to have their own
chapel and to conduct therein the Protestant service. He cites a case
in which a Catholic was severely punished for abusive language towards
some Protestant servants in respect to their religion, and remarks that
“the settling of the case was unquestionably creditable and honorable to
the Catholic governor and council.”[120] Mr. Davis, a Protestant, says:
“A freedom, however, of a wider sort springs forth at the _birth of the
colony--not demanded by that instrument_ [the charter], but permitted by
it--not graven upon the tables of stone, nor written upon the paper of
the statute-books, but conceived in the very bosom of the proprietary and
of the original pilgrims--not a formal or constructive kind, but a living
freedom, a freedom of the most practical sort. It is the freedom which
it remained for them, and for them alone, _either to grant or deny_--a
freedom embracing within its range, and protecting under its banner, all
those who were believers in Jesus Christ.”[121]
Again, the same author writes: “The records have been carefully searched.
No case of persecution occurred, during the administration of Gov.
Leonard Calvert, from the foundation of the settlement at St. Mary’s
to the year 1647.”[122] Langford, a writer contemporaneous with the
period of which we are treating, in his _Refutation of Babylon’s Fall_,
1655, confirms the result of Mr. Davis’ investigation of the records.
The Protestants of the colony themselves, in a _declaration_, of which
we will speak again, attribute the religious toleration they enjoyed
not solely to the Toleration Act, but also to “_several other strict
injunctions and declarations of his said lordship for that purpose
made and provided_.” Gov. Leonard Calvert also enjoined the same by a
proclamation, which is mentioned by numerous historians. A case arising
under this proclamation is given by Bozman and others in 1638, eleven
years before the passage of the Toleration Act. Capt. Cornwallis’
servants, who were Protestants, were lodged under the same roof with
William Lewis, a zealous Catholic, who was also placed in charge of the
servants. Entering one day the room where the servants were reading
aloud from a Protestant book--Mr. Smith’s _Sermons_--at the very moment
the Protestants were reading aloud a passage to the effect “that the
pope was Antichrist, and the Jesuits were anti-Christian ministers,”
supposing that the passage was read aloud especially for him to hear, he
ordered them with great warmth not to read that book, saying that “it
was a falsehood, and came from the devil, as all lies did; and that he
that writ it was an instrument of the devil, and he would prove it; and
that all Protestant ministers were ministers of the devil.” All the
parties were tried before the governor and his council; the case against
the servants was postponed for further testimony, but Mr. Lewis, the
Catholic, was condemned to pay a fine of five hundred pounds of tobacco
(then the currency of the colony), and to remain in the sheriff’s custody
until he found sufficient sureties in the future. Bozman thus remarks
upon this decision: “As these proceedings took place before the highest
tribunal of the province, composed of the three first officers in the
government, they amply develop the course of conduct with respect to
religion which those in whose hands the government of the province was
placed, had resolved to pursue.”[123] Not only did the Catholic lord
proprietary, in 1648, appoint Mr. Stone, a Protestant, to be the governor
of the province, but also he at the same time appointed a majority of the
privy councillors from the same faith.
We will close our testimony on this point with the official oath which
Lord Baltimore required the governor and the privy councillors to take;
it was substantially as follows:
“I will not by myself nor any person, directly or indirectly,
trouble, molest, or discountenance any person whatsoever in
said province professing to believe in Jesus Christ, for or in
respect to his or her religion, nor in his or her free exercise
thereof.”
We cannot determine when this oath began to be used. Bancroft places it
between 1636 and 1639. Chalmers, Dr. Hawks, and others give the time
as between 1637 and 1657. It is certain that this oath was prescribed
prior to the passage of the Toleration Act; for Governor Stone and the
councillors took the oath in 1648, and there is reason to believe that it
was in use at a much earlier period.
Referring to the period anterior to the passage of the Toleration Act,
Bancroft says: “Maryland at that day was unsurpassed for happiness and
liberty. Conscience was without restraint.”[124] Mr. Davis, in reference
to this subject, writes: “The toleration which prevailed from the first,
and for fifteen years later, was formally ratified by the voice of the
people” (in 1649).
Mr. Gladstone’s view of the subject is evidently superficial; it relates
exclusively to the passage of the Toleration Act, and was conceived and
published without the knowledge of the fact, which we have demonstrated,
that the toleration for which the Catholics of Maryland have been so
much praised had been practised for fifteen years before the passage of
that act. Surely, there can be no rival claim set forth in behalf of
Protestants for the period we have mentioned. Mr. Gladstone sets up his
claim for the Protestants under that act. We cannot admit the justice or
truth of the pretension. Let us examine it. This law enacted that “no
one professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall be troubled, molested,
or discountenanced for his religion, or the free exercise thereof, nor
compelled to the belief or exercise of any other religion against his
consent.” Now here, too, the claim set up by Mr. Gladstone, and by the
authors of the pamphlets he quotes, is met by stern facts.
In the first place, the Toleration Act of 1649 was the work of a
Catholic. It was prepared in England by Lord Baltimore himself, and sent
over to the Assembly with other proposed laws for their action. This fact
is related by nearly all writers on Maryland history, including those
consulted by Mr. Gladstone, except the writer of _Maryland not a Roman
Catholic Colony_, who does not refer to the subject, except to claim that
it was but the echo of a previous and similar order of the English House
of Commons in 1645 and of a statute passed by it in 1647. The last-named
writer even intimates that the Rev. Thomas Harrison, the former pastor of
the Puritans at Providence, afterward Annapolis, in Maryland, suggested
the whole matter to Lord Baltimore. We might even admit this pretension
without impairing the Catholic claim. It does not destroy the credit
due to the Catholics of Maryland in passing the Toleration Act to show
that others, even Puritans, entertained in one or two instances similar
views and enacted similar measures. We know that the Puritans in England
were proscriptive, and that in New England they did not practise the
toleration of Maryland. Even if Lord Baltimore had the measure suggested
to him by the Puritan Harrison, the act itself, when adopted by him
and put in practice, is still his act and that of the Assembly which
passed it. It remains their free and voluntary performance. The merit
which attaches to the good deeds of men is not destroyed by having been
suggested by others. A Puritan might even share in the act without
appropriating the whole credit to himself. But whatever merit is claimed
for the Puritans in these measures--which we cannot perceive--is
lost by their subsequent conduct. They overturned the government of
Lord Baltimore in Maryland, and under their ascendency Catholics were
persecuted in the very home of liberty to which Catholics had invited the
Puritans. But of the existence of the English toleration acts mentioned
by the writer referred to and by Mr. Gladstone, we have been supplied
with no proof. That the Puritan Harrison suggested the measure to Lord
Baltimore is hinted at, not roundly asserted, certainly not sustained by
proof.
But public facts give the negative to these pretensions. The Toleration
Act of 1649 was the immediate echo of the actual toleration which, under
the injunctions of Lord Baltimore, the proclamation of Governor Calvert,
and the uniform practice of the colonists, had long become the common
law of the colony. Why seek, in the turbulent and confused proceedings
of the Long Parliament, a model or example for the Maryland law, when
such exemplar is supplied nearer home by the colony itself from its first
inception? To the people of Maryland, in 1649, the Toleration Act was
nothing new; it was readily and unanimously received; it produced no
change in the constitution of the province. Toleration was not the law
or the practice of that day, either in England or her colonies; the echo
was too remote and too readily drowned by the din of persecution and of
strife.
But the Maryland Toleration Act contains intrinsic evidence of a purely
Catholic origin. The clause enforcing the honor and respect due to “the
blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Saviour,” which we have already
quoted, gives a Catholic flavor to the whole statute, and excludes the
theory of parliamentary or puritanical influence in originating the
measure. The claim thus set up is also against the concurrent voice of
history, which, with great accord, gives the authorship of the law to
Lord Baltimore, who, as he had enjoined and enforced its provisions on
the colony for fifteen years, needed no assistance in reducing them to
the form of a statute, which we are informed he did.
But who were the lawgivers of 1649, and what was their religion?
By the charter the law-making power was vested in Lord Baltimore and the
Assembly. It was for some years a matter of contest between them which
possessed the right to initiate laws. The lord proprietary, however,
finally conceded this privilege to the Assembly. It was not uncommon for
the Assembly to reject the laws first sent over by the lord proprietary,
and afterwards to bring them forward themselves and pass them. But in
1648, when Governor Stone was appointed, the Toleration Act was among
the measures sent by Lord Baltimore, for the action of the Assembly. The
government, then, consisted of Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, a Catholic,
without whose sanction no law could be enacted, and whose signature to
the measure in question was given the following year. The journal of the
Maryland legislature was lost or destroyed, but fortunately a fragment of
it is preserved, consisting of a report from the financial committee of
the Assembly, and the action of that body on the bill of charges. With
this document, and the aid of the historical facts recorded by Bozman and
other historians, we are enabled to ascertain the names of the members
of the Assembly in 1649.
Gov. Stone was lieutenant-governor and president of the council,
which was composed of Thomas Green, John Price, John Pile, and Robert
Vaughan, commissioned by the lord proprietary; and the remaining
councillors were Robert Clarke, surveyor-general, and Thomas Hatton,
secretary of the colony, _ex-officio_ members of the council. The
other members of the Assembly were the representatives of the freemen,
or burgesses, as follows: Cuthbert Fenwick, Philip Conner, William
Bretton, Richard Browne, George Manners, Richard Banks, John Maunsell,
Thomas Thornborough, and Walter Peake, nine in number. The governor,
councillors, and burgesses made sixteen in all; but as Messrs. Pile and
Hatton, one Catholic and one Protestant, were absent, the votes actually
cast were fourteen. On the memorable occasion in question the councillors
and burgesses sat in one “house,” and as such passed the Toleration Act.
Of the fourteen thus voting, Messrs. Green, Clarke, Fenwick, Bretton,
Manners, Maunsell, Peake, and Thornborough were Catholics, and Messrs.
Stone, Price, Vaughan, Conner, Banks, and Browne were Protestants. The
Catholics were eight to six Protestants.
But the Assembly was not the only law-making branch of the government.
The executive, or lord proprietary, was a co-ordinate branch, and
without his co-operation no law could pass. Now, the executive was
a Catholic, and a majority of the Assembly were Catholics; so that
we have it as a historical fact that in a government composed of two
co-ordinate branches, _both branches of the law-making power_ which
enacted the Toleration Act _were Catholic_. It is an important fact
that if all the Protestant members of the Assembly had voted against
the law, the Catholic majority could and would have passed it, and the
Catholic executive was only too ready to sanction his own measure. It
cannot, therefore, be said that the Catholics could not have passed the
law without the Protestant votes; for we have seen that both of the
co-ordinate branches of the government were in the hands of the Catholics.
Waiving, however, the division of the government into two co-ordinate
branches, by which method we have the entire government Catholic; and
regarding the lord proprietary merely as individual, computing the
lawgivers of 1649 simply numerically, we have the following result:
LAWGIVERS OF 1649.
_Catholics._ _Protestants._
Lord Baltimore. Lt.-Gov. Stone.
Mr. Green. Mr. Price.
Mr. Clarke. Mr. Vaughan.
Mr. Fenwick. Mr. Conner.
Mr. Bretton. Mr. Banks.
Mr. Manners. Mr. Browne--6.
Mr. Maunsell.
Mr. Peake.
Mr. Thornborough--9.
As Catholics we would be quite content with this showing; but we are
indebted to several Protestant authors--more impartial than Messrs.
Gladstone, Allen, and Neill, who write solely in the interests of
sect--for a computation of the respective Catholic and Protestant votes
in the Assembly in 1649, which, leaving out Lord Baltimore, and making
the number of votes fourteen, gives, according to their just and strictly
legal computation, _eleven Catholic votes and three Protestant votes
for the Act of Toleration_. Mr. Davis, in his _Day-Star of American
Freedom_, and Mr. William Meade Addison, in his _Religious Toleration in
America_, both Protestant authors, take this view, and enforce it with
strong facts and cogent reasonings. We will quote a passage, however,
from only one of these works, the former, showing their views and the
method by which they arrive at the respective numbers _eleven_ and
_three_. Mr. Davis writes: “The privy councillors were all of them, as
well as the governor, the special representatives of the Roman Catholic
proprietary--under an express pledge, imposed by him shortly before
the meeting of the Assembly (as may be seen by the official oath), to
do nothing at variance with the religious freedom of any believer in
Christianity--and removable any moment at his pleasure. It would be
fairer, therefore, to place the governor and the four privy councillors
on the same side as the six Roman Catholic burgesses. Giving Mr.
Browne to the other side, _we have eleven Roman Catholic against three
Protestant votes_.”[125]
We think, however, that if the computation is to be made by numbers, Lord
Baltimore must be included, as the act received his executive approval,
and could never have become a law without it. Thus, according to the
views of Messrs. Davis and Addison, with this amendment by us, the
numbers would stand twelve Catholic against three Protestant votes. But
we prefer taking our own two several methods of computation, viz., by
co-ordinate branches of the government, showing--
_Catholic._ _Protestant._
The executive, Lord Baltimore, None.
The Assembly, 2.
--and that estimated by numbers, counting Lord Baltimore as one, showing--
Catholics, 9. Protestants, 6.
This surely is a very different result from that announced by Mr.
Gladstone, following the author of _Maryland not a Roman Catholic
Colony_--viz., sixteen Protestant against eight Catholic votes. So far
the numbers given by Mr. Gladstone and the writer he follows are mere
assertion, unsupported by authority, either as to the composition of the
Assembly or the respective religious beliefs of the members. Mr. Davis,
however, gives in detail every member’s name, and refers to the proof by
which he arrives at their names and number; and the same testimony is
open, we presume, to the examination of all. In order that there may be
no lack of proof as to the religious faiths they professed, he gives a
personal sketch of each member of the Assembly in 1649, and proves from
their public acts, their deeds of conveyance, their land patents, their
last wills and testaments, the records of the courts, etc., that those
named by him as Catholics were incontestably of that faith.
The population of the colony in 1649 was also largely Catholic beyond
dispute. We have already shown that it was Catholic by a large majority
during the fifteen years preceding and up to that time. The above
computations, showing a majority of the legislature to be Catholic,
strongly indicates the complexion of the religious faith of their
constituents. Up to 1649 St. Mary’s, the Catholic county, was the only
county in the State, and Kent, the seat of the Protestant population, was
only a _hundred_ of St. Mary’s. Kent was not erected into a county until
the year the Toleration Act was passed. While St. Mary’s was populous
and Catholic, Kent was Protestant and thinly settled. There were six
_hundreds_ in St. Mary’s, all Catholic except perhaps one, and of that
one it is uncertain whether the majority was Catholic or Protestant. “But
the population of Kent,” says Davis, “was small. In 1639, if not many
years later, she was but a _hundred_ of St. Mary’s county.[126] In 1648
she paid a fifth part only of the tax, and did not hold in the Assembly
of that year a larger ratio of political power. That also was before the
return, we may suppose, of all the Roman Catholics who had been expelled
or exported from St. Mary’s by Capt. Ingle and the other enemies of the
proprietary. In 1649 she had but one delegate, while St. Mary’s was
represented by eight. And this year she paid but a sixth part of the tax,
and for many years after as well as before this Assembly there is no
evidence whatever of a division of the island (of Kent) or the county,
even into _hundreds_. Its population did not, in 1648, exceed the fifth,
nor in 1649 the sixth, part of the whole number of free white persons
in the province.”[127] After a thorough examination of the records, Mr.
Davis arrives at the conclusion that the Protestants constituted only
one-fourth of the population of Maryland at the time of the passage of
the Toleration Act, in 1649. His investigations must have been careful
and thorough, for he gives the sources of his information, refers to
_liber_ and _folio_, and cites copiously from the public records. He
thinks that for twenty years after the first settlement--to wit, about
the year 1654--the Catholics were in the majority. He concludes his
chapter on this subject with the following passage: “Looking, then, at
the question under both its aspects--regarding the faith either of the
delegates or of those whom they substantially represented--we cannot but
award the chief honor to the members of the Roman Church. To the Roman
Catholic freemen of Maryland is justly due the main credit arising from
the establishment, by a solemn legislative act, of religious freedom for
all believers in Christianity.”[128]
But, fortunately, we have another document at hand, signed in the most
solemn manner by those who certainly must have known the truth of the
case, as they were the contemporaries, witnesses of, and participators
in, the very events of which we are treating. This is what is usually
known as the Protestant _Declaration_, made the year after the passage of
the Toleration Act, and shortly after it was known that Lord Baltimore
had signed the act and made it the law of the land. This important
document is an outpouring of gratitude from the Protestants of the colony
to the Catholic proprietary for the religious toleration they enjoyed
under his government. It is signed by Gov. Stone, the privy councillors
Price, Vaughan, and Hatton--all of whom were members of the Assembly
that passed the Toleration Act--by all the Protestant burgesses in the
Assembly of 1650, and by a great number of the leading Protestants of the
colony. They address Lord Baltimore in these words:
“We, the said lieutenant, council, burgesses, and other
_Protestant_ inhabitants above mentioned, whose names are
hereunto subscribed, do declare and certify to all persons whom
it may concern that, according to an act of Assembly here,
_and several other strict injunctions and declarations by his
said lordship_, we do here enjoy all fitting and convenient
freedom and liberty in the exercise of our religion, under his
lordship’s government and interest; and that none of us are
anyways troubled or molested, for or by reason thereof, within
his lordship’s said province.”[129]
This important document is dated the 17th of April, 1650. It proves that
the religious toleration they enjoyed was not due alone to the act of
1649, but to the uniform policy of Lord Baltimore and his government;
and that even for the Toleration Act itself, which had recently become a
law by his signature, they were indebted to a Catholic. Comment on such
testimony is unnecessary.
Chancellor Kent, with the charter, the public policy of Lord Baltimore,
of his colonial officers and colonists, and the Toleration Act of 1649,
all submitted to his broad and profound judicial inquiry and judgment,
has rendered the following opinion and tribute to the Catholic lawgivers
of Maryland, to whom he attributes the merit of the generous policy we
are considering:
“The legislature had already, in 1649, declared by law that
no persons professing to believe in Jesus Christ should be
molested in respect to their religion, or in the free exercise
thereof, or compelled to the belief or exercise of any other
religion against their consent. Thus, in the words of a learned
and liberal historian (Grahame’s _History of the Rise and
Progress of the United States_), the Catholic planters of
Maryland won for their adopted country the distinguished praise
of being the first of American States in which toleration was
established by law, and while the Puritans were persecuting
their Protestant brethren in New England, and Episcopalians
retorting the same severity on the Puritans in Virginia, the
Catholics, against whom the others were combined, formed
in Maryland a sanctuary where all might worship and none
might oppress, and where even Protestants sought refuge from
Protestant intolerance.”[130]
Catholics have written comparatively little upon this subject. The
historians of Maryland have been chiefly Protestants. As long as
Protestants so unanimously accorded to the Catholic founders of Maryland
the chief credit of this great event, it was unnecessary for Catholics
to speak in their own behalf. It has remained for Mr. Gladstone and the
two sectarian ministers he follows to attempt to mar the harmony of that
grateful and honorable accord of the Protestant world, by which Catholic
Maryland received from the united voice of Protestant history the
enviable title of “_The Land of the Sanctuary_.”
ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,”
ETC.
CHAPTER XI.
A DINNER AT THE COURT, WITH AN EPISODE.
Crossing from the station to his brougham, Sir Simon saw Mr. Langrove
issuing from a cottage on the road. The vicar had been detained later
than he foresaw on a sick-call, and was hurrying home to dress for
dinner. It was raining sharply. Sir Simon hailed him:
“Shall I give you a lift, Langrove?”
“Thank you; I shall be very glad. I am rather late as it is.” And they
got into the brougham together.
“And how wags the world with you, my reverend friend? Souls being saved
in great numbers, eh?” inquired the baronet when they had exchanged their
friendly greetings.
“Humph! I am thankful not to have the counting of them,” was the reply,
with a shake of the head that boded ill for the sanctification of
Dullerton.
“That’s it, is it? Well, we are all going down the hill together; there
is some comfort in that. But how about Miss Bulpit? Don’t her port wine
and tracts snatch a few brands from the burning?”
“For the love of heaven don’t speak to me of her! Don’t, I beg of you!”
entreated the vicar, throwing up his hands deprecatingly, and moved from
the placid propriety that seemed a law of nature to him.
“Suppose I had good news to report of her?”
“How so?” cried Mr. Langrove with sudden vivacity. “She’s not going to
marry Sparks, is she?”
“Not just yet; but the next best thing to that. She is going to leave the
neighborhood.”
“You don’t mean it!”
“I do indeed. How is it you’ve not heard of it before? She’s been
pestering Anwyll these two years about some repairs or improvements she
wants done in her house--crotchets, I dare say, that would have to be
pulled to pieces for the next tenant. He has always politely referred
her to his agent, which means showing her to the door; but at last she
threatened to leave if he did not give in and do what she wants.”
“Oh! is that all?” exclaimed the vicar, crestfallen. “I might have waited
a little before I hallooed; we are not out of the woods yet. Anwyll is
sure to give in rather than let her go.”
“Nothing of the sort. He dislikes the old lady, and so does his mother,
and so particularly does your venerable _confrère_ of Rydal Rectory. I
met Anwyll this morning at the club, and he told me he had made up his
mind to let her go. It happens--luckily for you, I suspect--that he has a
tenant in view to take her place. Come, now, cheer up! Is not that good
news?”
“Most excellent!” said the vicar emphatically. “I wonder where she will
move to?”
“Perhaps I could tell you that too. She is in treaty with Charlton for
a dilapidated old hunting lodge of his in the middle of a fir-wood
the other side of Axmut Common, about twenty miles the other side of
Moorlands; it is as good as settled, I believe, and if so we are all safe
from her.”
“Well, you do surprise me!” exclaimed Mr. Langrove, his countenance
expanding into a breadth of satisfaction that was absolutely radiant.
“Who is the incumbent of Axmut, let me see?” he said, musing.
“There is as good as none; it is a lonely spot, with no church within
ten miles, I believe. I shrewdly suspect this was the main attraction;
for the life of him, Charlton says, he can’t see any other. It is a
tumble-down, fag-end-of-the-world-looking place as you would find in all
England. It must be the clear coast for ‘dealing with souls,’ as she
calls it, that baited her. There is a community of over a hundred poor
people, something of the gypsy sort, scattered over the common and in a
miserable little hamlet they call the village; so she may preach away to
her heart’s content, and no one to compete or interfere with her but the
blacksmith, who rants every Sunday under a wooden shed, or on a tub on
the common, according to the state of the weather.”
“Capital! That’s just the place for her!” was the vicar’s jubilant remark.
In spite of the pleasure that lit up his features, usually so mild and
inexpressive, Sir Simon, looking closely at the vicar, thought him worn
and aged. “You look tired, Langrove. You are overworked, or else Miss
Bulpit has been too much for you; which is it?” he said kindly.
“A little of both, perhaps,” the vicar laughed. “I have felt the recent
cold a good deal; the cold always pulls me down. I’ll be all right when
the spring comes round and hunts the rheumatism out of my bones,” he
added, moving his arm uncomfortably.
“You ought to do like the swallow--migrate to a warm climate before the
cold sets in,” observed Sir Simon; “nothing else dislodges rheumatism.”
“That’s just what Blink was saying to me this morning. He urged me very
strongly to go away for a couple of months now to get out of the way of
the east winds. He wants me to take a trip to the South of France.” Mr.
Langrove laughed gently as he said this.
“And why don’t you?”
“Because I can’t afford it.”
“Nonsense, nonsense! Take it first, and afford it afterwards. That’s my
maxim.”
“A very convenient maxim for you, but not so practicable for an incumbent
with a large family and a short income as for the landlord of Dullerton,”
said Mr. Langrove good-humoredly.
The baronet winced.
“Prudence and economy are all very well,” he replied, “but they may be
carried too far; your health is worth more to you than any amount of
money. If you want the change, you should take it and pay the price.”
“I suppose we might have most things, if we choose to take them on those
terms,” remarked the vicar. “‘Take it and pay the price!’ says the poet;
but some prices are too high for any value. Who would do my work while I
was off looking after my health? Is that Bourbonais hurrying up the hill?
He will get drenched; he has no umbrella.”
“Like him to go out a day like this without one,” said Sir Simon in an
accent of fond petulance. “How is he? How is Franceline? How does she
look?”
“Poorly enough. If she were my child, I should be very uneasy about her.”
“Ha! does Bourbonais seem uneasy? Do you see much of him?”
“No; not through my fault, nor indeed through his. We have each our
separate work, and these winter days are short. I met him this morning
coming out of Blink’s as I went in. I did not like his look; he had his
hat pulled over his eyes, and when I spoke to him he answered me as if he
hardly knew who I was or what he was saying.”
“And you did not ask if there was anything amiss?” said Sir Simon in a
tone of reproach.
“I did, but not him. I asked Blink.”
“Ha! what did he say?” And the baronet bent forward for the answer with
an eager look.
“Nothing very definite--you know his grandiloquent, vague talk--but
he said something about hereditary taint on the lungs; and I gathered
that he thought it was a mistake not having taken her to a warm climate
immediately after that accident to her chest; but whether the mistake was
his or the count’s I could not quite see. I imagine from what he said
that there was a money difficulty in the way, or he thought there was,
and did not, perhaps, urge the point as strongly as he otherwise would.”
Sir Simon fell back on the cushions, muttering some impatient exclamation.
“That was perhaps a case where the maxim of ‘take it first and afford it
afterwards’ would seem justifiable,” observed Mr. Langrove.
“Of course it was! But Bourbonais is such an unmanageable fellow in
those things. The strongest necessity will never extract one iota of a
sacrifice of principle from him; you might as well try to bend steel.”
“He has always given me the idea of a man of a very high sense of honor,
very scrupulous in doing what he considers his duty,” said Mr. Langrove.
“He is, he is,” assented the baronet warmly; “he is the very ideal and
epitome of honor and high principle. Not to save his life would he swerve
one inch from the straight road; but to save Franceline I fancied he
might have been less rigid.” He heaved a sigh, and they said no more
until the brougham let Sir Simon down at his own door, and then drove on
to take Mr. Langrove to the vicarage.
A well-known place never appears so attractive as when we look at it
for the last time. An indifferent acquaintance becomes pathetic when
seen through the softening medium of a last look. It is like breaking
off a fraction of our lives, snapping a link that can never be joined
again. A sea-side lodging, if it can claim one sweet or sad memory with
our passing sojourn there, wears a touching aspect when we come to say
“good-by,” with the certainty that we shall never see the place again.
But how if the spot has been the cradle of our childhood, the home of our
fathers for generations, where every stone is like a monument inscribed
with sacred and dear memories? Sir Simon was not a sentimental man; but
all the tenderness common to good, affectionate, cultivated natures
had its place in his heart. He had always loved the old home. He was
proud of it as one of the finest and most ancient houses of his class in
England; he admired its grand and noble proportions, its architectural
strength and beauty; and he had the reverence for it that every well-born
man feels for the place where his fathers were born, and where they have
lived and died. But never had the lordly Gothic mansion looked to him
so home-like as on this cold January evening when he entered it, in all
human probability, for the last time. It was brilliantly lighted up to
welcome him. The servants, men and women, were assembled in the hall to
meet him. It was one of those old-fashioned patriarchal customs that were
kept up at the Court, where so many other old customs survived, unhappily
less harmless than this. As Sir Simon passed through the two rows of
glad, respectful faces, he had a pleasant word for all, as if his heart
were free from care.
The hall was a sombre, cathedral-like apartment that needed floods
of light to dispel its oppressive solemnity. To-night it was filled
with a festal breadth of light; the great chandelier that hung from
the groined roof was in a blaze, while the bronze figures all around
supported clusters of lamps that gleamed like silver balls against the
dark wainscoting. The dining-room and library, which opened to the
right, stood open, and displayed a brilliant illumination of lamps and
wax-lights. Huge fires burned hospitably on all the hearths. The table
was ready spread; silver and crystal shone and sparkled on the snowy
damask; flowers scented the air as in a garden. Sir Simon glanced at it
all as he passed. Could it be that he was going to leave all this, never
to behold it again? It seemed impossible that it could be true.
As he stood once more in the midst of his household gods, those familiar
divinities whose gentle power he had never fully recognized until now,
it seemed to him that he was safe. There was an unaccountable sense
of security in their mere presence; they smiled on him, and seemed to
promise protection for their shrine and their votary.
The baronet went straight to his room, made a hasty toilet, and came down
to the library to await his guests.
He was in hopes that Raymond would have come before the others, and that
they might have a little talk together. But Raymond was behind them all.
Everybody was assembled, the dinner was waiting, and he had not yet
arrived.
It was a mere chance that he came at all. Nothing, in fact, but the
dread of awakening Franceline’s suspicions had withheld him from sending
an excuse at the last moment; but that dread, which so controlled his
life in every act, almost in every thought, compelling him to hide his
feelings under a mask of cheerfulness when his heart was breaking, drove
him out to join the merry-makers. It was all true what Mr. Langrove had
said. There had been a return of the spitting of blood that morning,
very slight, but enough to frighten Angélique and hurry her off with
her charge to the doctor. He had talked vaguely about debility--nervous
system unstrung--no vital mischief so far; the lungs were safe. The
old woman was soothed, and went home resolved to do what was to be
done without alarming her master or telling him what had occurred.
She counted, however, without Miss Merrywig. That pleasant old lady
happened from the distance to see them coming from the doctor’s house,
and, on meeting the count next morning, asked what report there was of
Franceline. Raymond went straight to Blink’s.
“I ask you as a man of honor to tell me the truth,” he said; “it is a
matter of life and death to me to know it.”
The medical man answered his question by another: “Tell me frankly, are
you in a position to take her immediately to a warm climate? I should
prefer Cairo; but if that is impossible, can you take her to the South of
France?”
Raymond’s heart stood still. Cairo! It had come to this, then.
“I can take her to Cairo,” he said, speaking deliberately after a
moment’s silence. “I will take her at once.”
He thought of Sir Simon’s blank check. He would make use of it. He would
save his child; at least he would keep her with him a few years longer.
“Why did you not tell me this sooner?” he asked in a tone of quick
resentment.
“I did not believe it to be essential. I thought from the first it would
have been desirable; but you may recollect, when I suggested taking her
even to the South of France, your daughter opposed the idea with great
warmth, and you were silent. I inferred that there was some insuperable
obstacle in the way, and that it would have been cruel as well as useless
to press the matter.”
“And you say it is not too late?”
“No. I give you my word, as far as I can see, it is not. The return of
the spitting of blood is a serious symptom, but the lungs as yet are
perfectly sound.” M. de la Bourbonais went home, and opened the drawer
where he kept the blank check; not with the idea of filling it up there
and then--he must consider many things first--but he wanted to see it, to
make sure it was not a dream. He examined it attentively, and replaced
it in the drawer. A gleam of satisfaction broke out on the worn, anxious
face. But it vanished quickly. His eye fell on Sir Simon’s letter of
the day before. He snatched it up and read it through again. A new and
horrible light was breaking on him. Sir Simon was a ruined man; he was
going to be turned out of house and home; he was a bankrupt. What was
his signature worth? So much waste paper. He could not have a sixpence
at his bankers’ or anywhere else; if he had, it was in the hands of the
creditors who were to seize his house and lands. “Why did he give it to
me? He must have known it was worth nothing!” thought Raymond, his eyes
wandering over the letter with a gaze of bewildered misery.
But Sir Simon had not known it. It was not the first time he had
overdrawn his account with his bankers; but they were an old-fashioned
firm, good Tories like himself. The Harnesses had banked with them from
time immemorial, and there existed between them and their clients of this
type a sort of adoption. If Sir Simon was in temporary want of ready
money, it was their pleasure as much as their business to accommodate
him; the family acres were broad and fat. Sir Simon was on friendly but
not on confidential terms with his bankers; they knew nothing of the
swarm of leeches that were fattening on those family acres, so there was
no fear in their minds as to the security of whatever accommodation
he might ask at their hands. When Sir Simon signed the check he felt
certain it would be honored for any amount that Raymond was likely to
fill it up for. But since then things had come to a crisis; his signature
was now worth nothing. Lady Rebecca, on whose timely departure from
this world of care he had counted so securely as the means of staving
off a catastrophe, had again disappointed him, and the evil hour so
long dreaded and so often postponed had come. Little as Raymond knew of
financial mysteries, he was too intelligent not to guess that a man on
the eve of being made a bankrupt could have no current account at his
bankers’. Dr. Blink’s decree was, then, the death-warrant of his child!
Raymond buried his face in his hands in an agony too deep for tears. But
the sound of Franceline’s step on the stairs roused him. For her sake he
must even now look cheerful; love is a tyrant that allows no quarter to
self. She came in and found her father busy, writing away as if absorbed
in his work. She knew his moods. Evidently he did not want her just now;
she would not disturb him, but drew her little stool to the chimney
corner and began to read. An hour passed. It was time for her father to
dress for dinner; but still the sound of the pen scratching the paper
went on diligently.
“Petit père, it is half-past six, do you know?” said the bright, silvery
voice, and Raymond started as if he had been stung.
“So late, is it? Then I must be off at once.” And he hurried away to
dress, and only looked in to kiss her as he ran down-stairs, and was off.
“Loiterer!” exclaimed Sir Simon, stretching out both hands and clasping
his friend’s cordially.
“I have kept you waiting, I fear. The fact is, I got writing and forgot
the hour,” said the count apologetically.
Dinner was announced immediately, and the company went into the
dining-room.
They were a snug number, seven in all; the only stranger amongst them
being a Mr. Plover, who happened to be staying at Moorlands. He was an
unprepossessing-looking man, sallow, keen-eyed, and with a mouth that
superficial observers would have called firm, but which a physiognomist
might have described as cruel. His hair was dyed, his teeth were false--a
shrunken, shrivelled-looking creature, whose original sap and verdure, if
he ever had any, had been parched up by the fire of tropical suns. He had
spent many years in India, and was now only just returned from Palestine.
What he had been doing there nobody particularly understood. He talked
of his studies in geology, but they seemed to have been chiefly confined
to the study of such stones as had a value in the general market; he had
a large collection of rubies, sapphires, and diamonds, some of which he
had shown to Mr. Charlton, and excited his wonder as to the length of
the purse that could afford to collect such costly souvenirs of foreign
lands simply as souvenirs. Mr. Plover had met his host accidentally
a week ago, and discovered that he and the father of the latter had
been school-fellows. The son was not in a position either to verify or
disprove the assertion, but Mr. Plover was so fresh in his affectionate
recollection of his old form-fellow that young Charlton’s heart warmed
to him, and he then and there invited him down to Moorlands. He could
not do otherwise than ask Sir Simon to include him in his invitation to
the Court this evening; but he did it reluctantly. He was rather ashamed
of his pompous, self-sufficient friend, whose transparent faith in the
power and value of money gave a dash of vulgarity to his manners, which
was heightened by contrast with the well-bred simplicity of the rest of
the company. He had not been ten minutes in the room when he informed
them that he meant to buy an estate if he could find an eligible one in
this neighborhood; if not, he would rent the first that was to be had on
a long lease. He wanted to be near his young friend Charlton. Sir Simon
was extremely civil to him--surprisingly so.
The other faces we know: Mr. Langrove, bland, serious, mildly exhilarated
just now, like a man suddenly relieved of a toothache--Miss Bulpit was
going from the parish; Mr. Charlton running his turquois ring through
his curly light hair, and agreeing with everybody all round; Lord
Roxham, well-bred and lively; Sir Ponsonby Anwyll, a pleasant sample
of the English squire, blond-visaged, good-tempered, burly-limbed, and
displaying a vast amount of shirt-front; M. de la Bourbonais, a distinct
foreign type, amidst these familiar English ones, the face furrowed with
deep lines of study, of care too, unmistakably, the forehead moulded to
noble thought, the eyes deep-set under strong projecting black brows,
their latent fire flashing out through the habitually gentle expression
when he grew animated. He was never a talkative man in society, and
to-night he was more silent than usual; but no one noticed this, not
even Sir Simon. He was too much absorbed in his own preoccupation.
Raymond sat opposite him as his _alter ego_, doing the honors of one side
of the hospitable round table.
The conversation turned at first on generalities and current events;
the presence of Mr. Plover, instead of feeding it with a fresh stream,
seemed to check the flow and prevent its becoming intimate and personal.
Sir Simon felt this, and took it in his own hands and kept it going,
so that, if not as lively as usual, it did not flag. Raymond looked
on and listened in amazement. Was yesterday’s letter a dream, and
would this supreme crisis vanish as lesser ones had so often done?
Was it possible that a man could be so gay--so, to all appearance,
contented and unconcerned, on the very brink of ruin, disgrace, beggary,
banishment--all, in a word, that to a man of the baronet’s character and
position constitute existence? He was not in high spirits. Raymond would
not so much have wondered at that. High spirits are sometimes artificial;
people get them up by stimulants as a cloak for intense depression. No,
it was real cheerfulness and gayety. Was there any secret hope bearing
him up to account for the strange anomaly? Raymond could speculate on
this in the midst of his own burning anxiety; but for the first time
in his life bitterness mingled with his sympathy for the baronet. Was
it not all his own doing, this disgrace that had overtaken him? He had
been an unprincipled spendthrift all his life, and now the punishment
had come, and was swallowing up others in its ruin. If he had not been
the reckless, extravagant man that he was, he might at this moment be a
harbor of refuge to Raymond, and save his child from a premature death.
But he was powerless to help any one. This is what his slavish human
respect had brought himself and others to. A few hundred pounds might
save, or at any rate prolong for perhaps many years, the life of the
child he professed to love as his own, and he had not them to give; he
had squandered his splendid patrimony in the most contemptible vanity,
in selfish indulgence and unprofitable show. And there he sat, a piece
of tinsel glittering like true gold, affable, jovial, as if care were a
hundred miles away from him. M. de la Bourbonais felt as if he were in a
dream, as if everything were unreal--everything except the vulture that
was gnawing silently at his own heart.
The conversation grew livelier as the wine went round. Mr. Plover was
attending carefully to his dinner, and was content to let others do the
most of the talking. A discussion arose as to a case of something very
like perjury that a magistrate of the next county had been involved in.
Some were warmly defending, while others as warmly condemned, him. Mr.
Plover suspended the diligence of his knife and fork to join with the
latter; he was almost aggressive in his manner of contradicting the other
side. The story was this: A magistrate had to judge a case of libel
where the accused was a friend of his own, who had saved him from being
made a bankrupt some years before by lending him a large sum of money
without interest or security. The evidence broke down, and the man was
acquitted. It transpired, however, a few days later, that the magistrate
had in his possession at the time of the trial proof positive of his
friend’s guilt. In answer to this charge he replied that the evidence in
question had come to his knowledge under the seal of confidence; that he
was therefore bound in honor not only not to divulge it, but to ignore
its existence in forming his judgment on the case. The statement was
denied, and it was affirmed that the only seal which bound him was one of
gratitude, and that he was otherwise perfectly free to make use of his
information to condemn the accused.
The dispute as to the right and the wrong of the question was growing
hot, when Sir Ponsonby Anwyll, who noticed how silent Raymond was, called
out to him across the table:
“And what do you say, count?”
“I should say that gratitude in such a case might stand in the place of a
verbal promise and compel the judge to be silent,” replied Raymond.
“The temptation to silence was very strong, no doubt, but would it
justify him in pronouncing an acquittal against his conscience?” asked
Mr. Langrove.
“It was not against his conscience,” replied the count; “on the contrary,
it was in accordance with it, since it was on the side of mercy.”
“Quite a French view of the subject!” said Mr. Plover superciliously,
showing his shining teeth through his coal-black moustache. “If I were
a criminal, commend me to a French jury; but if innocent, give me an
English one!”
“Mercy has perhaps too much the upper hand with our tender-hearted
neighbors,” observed Sir Simon; “but justice is none the worse for being
tempered with it.”
“That is neither here nor there,” said Mr. Plover. “Justice is justice,
and law is law; and it strikes me this Mr. X---- has tampered with both,
and it’s a very strange thing if he is not tabooed as a perjurer who has
dodged the letter of the law and escaped the hulks, but whom no gentleman
ought from this out to associate with.”
“Come, come, that is rather strong language,” said Mr. Langrove. “We must
not outlaw on mere inferential evidence a man who has borne all his life
a most honorable name; and if worse comes to worst, we must remember
it would go hard with the best of us to put a social brand on a friend
that we were deeply indebted to, if we could by any possibility find a
loophole of escape for him. A man may remain strictly honest in the main,
and yet not be heroic enough not to save a friend on a quibble.”
“Why, to be sure; there are honest men and honest men,” assented Plover.
“I’ve known some whose moral capacity expanded to camels when expediency
demanded the feat and it could be done discreetly. It’s astounding what
some of these honest men can swallow.”
Sir Simon felt what this speech implied of impertinence to Mr. Langrove,
and, indeed, to everybody present. “Roxham,” he said irrelevantly, “why
is your glass empty? Bourbonais, are you passing those delectable little
_patés de foie gras_?”
Raymond helped himself mechanically, as the servant presented again the
rejected dish.
“It would be a nice thing to define exactly the theory of truth and its
precise limits,” observed Mr. Langrove in his serious, sententious way,
addressing himself to no one in particular.
“One should begin by defining the nature of truth, I suppose,” said Mr.
Plover. “Let us have a definition from our host!”
“Oh! if you are going in for metaphysics, I hand you over to Bourbonais!”
said Sir Simon good-humoredly. “Take the pair of them in hand, Raymond,
and run them through the body for our edification.”
Raymond smiled.
“I should very much like to have the count’s opinion on this particular
point of metaphysics or morals, whichever it may be,” said Mr. Plover.
“Do you believe it possible for a man to effect such a compromise with
his conscience, and yet be, as our reverend friend describes him, a
blameless and upright man?”
“I do,” answered M. de la Bourbonais with quiet emphasis. “I doubt if
any simple incident can with safety be taken as the key of a man’s
character. One fault, for instance, may stand out in his life and color
it with dishonor, and yet be a far less trustworthy index to his real
nature than, a very slight fault committed deliberately and involving no
consequences. We are more deliberate in little misdeeds than in great
ones. When a man commits a crime, he is not always a free agent as
regards the command of his moral forces; there are generally a horde of
external influences at work overpowering his choice, which is in reality
his individual self. When he succumbs to this pressure from without,
we cannot therefore logically consider him as the sole and deliberate
architect of his sin; hard necessity, fear of disgrace, love of life,
nay, some generous feeling, such as gratitude or pity, may hurry a man
into a criminal action as completely at variance with the whole of his
previous and subsequent life as would be the act of a Christian flinging
himself out of the window in a fit of temporary insanity.”
“Subtly put,” sneered Mr. Plover. “If we were to follow up that theory,
we might find it necessary on investigation to raise statues to our
forgers and murderers, instead of sending them to the hulks and the
gallows.”
“It opens a curious train of thought, nevertheless,” remarked Lord Roxham.
“I don’t fancy it would be a very profitable one to pursue,” said Plover.
“I have sometimes considered whether it may not on given occasions be
justifiable to do evil; I mean technically evil, as we class things,”
said Lord Roxham.
“For instance?” said Mr. Langrove.
“Well, for instance--I’ll put it mildly--to convey a false idea of facts,
as your friend X---- seems to have done in this libel business. I suppose
there are cases where it would be morally justifiable?”
“To tell a lie, you mean? That is a startling proposition,” said the
vicar, smiling.
“It has the merit of originality, at least,” observed Mr. Plover, helping
himself to a tumblerful of claret.
“I’m afraid it can’t boast even that,” said Lord Roxham; “it is only an
old sophism rather bluntly put.”
“I should like to hear the Count de la Bourbonais’ opinion on it,” said
Mr. Plover, rolling the decanter across to his self-elected antagonist.
Raymond had feigned unconsciousness of the stranger’s insolent tone thus
far, though he had detected it from the first, and was only too deeply
possessed by other thoughts to resent it or to care a straw for what
this stranger or any human being thought of him or said to him. But the
persistency of the attack forced him to notice it at last, if not to
repel it; he was not sufficiently interested in the thing for that. But
he was roused from the kind of stinging lethargy in which he had hitherto
sat there, nibbling at one thing or another, oftener playing with his
knife and fork, and touching nothing. He laid them down now, and pushed
aside his glass, which had been emptied to-night oftener than was his
wont.
“You mean to ask,” he said, “if, according to our low French code of
morals, we consider it justifiable to commit a crime for the sake of some
good to ourselves or others?”
“I don’t go quite that length,” replied Mr. Plover; “but I assume from
what you have already said that you look on it as permissible to--tell a
lie, for example, under given circumstances.”
“I do,” said Raymond.
There was a murmur of surprise and dissent.
“My dear Bourbonais! you are joking, or talking for the mere sake of
argument,” cried Sir Simon, forcing a laugh; but he looked vexed and
astonished.
“I am not joking, nor am I arguing for argument’s sake,” protested
Raymond with rising warmth. “I say, and I am prepared to prove it, that
under given circumstances we are justified in withholding the truth--in
telling a lie, if you like that way of putting it better.”
“What are they?”
“Prove it!”
“Let us hear!”
Several spoke together, excited and surprised, and every head was bent
towards M. de la Bourbonais. Raymond moved his spectacles, and, fixing
his dark gray eyes on Mr. Plover as the one who had directly challenged
him, he said:
“Let us take an illustration. Suppose you entrust me with that costly
diamond ring upon your finger, I having promised on my oath to carry
it to a certain person and to keep its possession a secret. We will
suppose that your life and your honor depend on its being delivered at
its destination by me and at a given time. On my way thither I meet an
assassin, who puts his pistol to my breast and says, ‘Deliver up your
purse and a diamond which I understand you have on your person, or I
shoot you and take them; but if you give me your word that you have not
got it, I will believe you and let you go.’ Am I not justified, in order
to save your honor and life and my own in answering, ‘No, I have not got
the diamond’?”
“Certainly not!” cried Plover emphatically, bringing his jewelled hand
down on the table with a crash.
“My dear sir!…” began some one; but Raymond echoed sharply:
“‘Certainly not!’ Just so. But suppose I draw my pistol and shoot the
robber dead on the spot? God and the law absolve me; I have a right
to kill any man who threatens my life or my property, or that of my
neighbor.”
“You have! Undoubtedly you have!” said two or three, speaking together.
“And yet homicide is a greater sin than a lie!” cried Raymond. He was
flushed and excited; his eye sparkled and his hand trembled as he pushed
the glasses farther away, and leaned on the table, surveying the company
with a glance that had something of triumph and something of defiance in
it.
“Well done, Bourbonais!” cried Sir Simon. “You’ve not left Plover an inch
of ground to stand on!”
“Closely reasoned,” said Mr. Langrove, with a dubious movement of the
head; “but.…”
“Sophistry! a very specious bit of sophistry!” said Mr. Plover in a loud
voice, drowning everybody else’s. “Comte and Rousseau and the rest of
them in a nutshell.”
“Crack it, then, and let’s have the kernel!” said Lord Roxham. He was
growing out of patience with the dictatorial tone of this vulgar man.
“Just so!” chimed in Mr. Charlton, airing a snowy hand and signet gem,
and falling back in his chair with the air of a man wearied with hard
thinking.
“It’s too preposterous to answer,” was Plover’s evasive taunt; “it’s mere
casuistry.”
“A very compact bit of casuistry, at any rate,” said Sir Simon, with
friendly pride in Raymond’s manifest superiority over his assembled
guests; “it strikes me it would take more than our combined wits to
answer it.”
“Egad! I’d eat my head before _I’d_ answer it!” confessed Ponsonby
Anwyll, who shared the baronet’s personal complacency in the count’s
superior brain. But Raymond had lapsed into his previous silent mood, and
sat absently toying with a plate of bonbons before him, and apparently
deaf to the clashing of tongues that he had provoked. There was something
very touching in his look, in the air of gentle dejection that pervaded
him, and which contrasted strikingly with the transient warmth he had
displayed while speaking. Sir Simon noticed it, and it smote him to
the heart. For the first time this evening he bethought him how his
own cheerfulness must strike Raymond, and how he must be puzzled to
account for it. He promised himself the pleasure of explaining it to
his satisfaction before they parted to-night; but meanwhile it gave him
a pang to think of the iron that was in his friend’s soul, though it
was part of his pleasant expectation that he would be able to draw it
out and pour some healing balm on the wound to-morrow. He would show
him why he had borne so patiently with the vulgar pedagogue who had
permitted himself to fail, at least by insinuation, in respect to M. de
la Bourbonais. The pedagogue meanwhile seemed bent on making himself
disagreeable to the inoffensive foreigner.
“It is a pity X---- was not able to secure Count de la Bourbonais as
counsel,” he began again. “In the hands of so skilful a casuist his
backsliding might have come out quite in a heroic light. It would have
been traced to his poverty, which engendered his gratitude, and so on
until we had a verdict that would have been virtually a glorification of
impecuniosity. It is a pity we have missed the treat.”
“Poverty is no doubt responsible for many backslidings,” said Raymond,
bridling imperceptibly. He felt the sting of the remark as addressed to
him by the rich man, or he fancied he did. “The world would no doubt be
better as well as happier if riches were more equally divided; but there
are worse things in the world than poverty, for all that.”
“There is the excess of riches, which is infinitely worse--a more
unmitigated source of evil, taking it all in all,” said Mr. Langrove.
“Well said for a professional, my dear sir,” laughed Mr. Plover; “but
you won’t find many outsiders to agree with you, I suspect.”
“If by outsiders you mean Turks, Jews, and Hottentots, I daresay you are
right,” said the vicar good-temperedly.
“I mean every sensible man who is not bound by his cloth to talk cant--no
offence; I use the word technically--you won’t find one such out of a
thousand to deny that riches are the best gift of heaven, the one that
can buy every other worth having--love and devotion into the bargain.”
“What rank heresy you are propounding, my dear sir!” exclaimed Sir Simon,
taking a pinch from his enamelled snuff-box, and passing it on. “You will
not find one sane man in a thousand to agree with you!”
“Won’t I though? What do you say, count?”
“I agree with you, monsieur,” said Raymond with a certain asperity;
“money can purchase most things worth having, but I deny that it can
always pay for them.”
“Ha! there we have the sophist again. It can buy, and yet it can’t pay.
Pray explain!”
“What do you mean, Raymond?” said Sir Simon, darting a curious, puzzled
look at his friend.
“It is very simple. I mean that money may sometimes enable us to confer
an obligation which no money can repay. We may, for instance, do a
service or avert a sorrow by means of a sum of money, and thus purchase
love and gratitude--things which Mr. Plover has included in those worth
having, and which money cannot pay for, though it may be the means of
buying them.” The look that accompanied the answer said more to Sir Simon
than the words conveyed to any one else. He averted his eyes quickly,
and was all at once horrified to discover several empty glasses round the
table. They were at dessert now.
“Charlton, have you tried that Madeira? Help yourself again, and pass it
on here, will you? I shall have to play Ganymede, and go round pouring
out the nectar to you like so many gods, if you don’t bestir yourselves.”
And then there was a clinking of glasses, as the amber and ruby liquid
was poured from many a curious flagon into the glistening crystal cups.
“Talking of gods, that’s a god’s eye that you see there on Plover’s
finger,” observed Mr. Charlton, whose azure gem was quite eclipsed by the
flashing jewel that had suggested M. de la Bourbonais’ illustration. “It
was set in the forehead of an Indian idol. Just let Sir Simon look at
it; he’s a judge of precious stones,” said the young man, who felt that
his feeble personality gained something from the proximity of so big a
personage, and was anxious to show him off. The latter complacently drew
the ring from his finger and tossed it over to his host. It was a large
white diamond of the purest water, without the shadow of a flaw.
“It _is_ a beauty!” exclaimed Sir Simon with the enthusiasm of a
connoisseur; “only it’s too good to be worn by a man. It ought to have
gone to a beautiful woman when it left the god. I suppose it will soon,
eh, Plover?”
Mr. Plover laughed. He was not a marrying man, he said, but he would
make no rash vows. Then he went on to tell about other precious stones
in his possession. He had some amazingly sensational stories to relate
concerning them and how he became possessed of them. We generally
interest others when we get on a subject that thoroughly interests
ourselves and that we thoroughly understand. Mr. Plover understood a
great deal about these legendary gems, and the celebrated idols in which
they had figured; he had, moreover, imbibed a certain tinge of Oriental
superstition concerning the talismanic properties of precious gems, and
invested them, perhaps half unconsciously, with that kind of prestige
that is not very far off from worship. This flavor of superstition
pierced unawares through his discourse on the qualities and adventures
of various rubies and sapphires that had played stirring parts in the
destinies of particular gods, and were universally believed to influence
for good or evil the lives of mortals who became possessed of them.
The company began to find him less disagreeable as he went on. They did
not quite believe in him; but when a story-teller amuses us, we are not
apt to quarrel with him for using a traveller’s privilege and drawing the
long bow.
By the time this vein was exhausted the party had quite forgiven
the obnoxious guest, and admitted him within the sympathetic ring
of good-fellowship and conviviality. M. de la Bourbonais had become
unusually talkative, and contributed his full share to the ebb and flow
of lively repartee. He was generally as abstemious as an anchorite; but
to-night he broke through his ascetic habits, and filled and refilled his
glass many times. It was deep drinking for him, though for any one else
it would have been reckoned moderate. Before the dessert was long on the
table the effect of the wine was visible in his excited manner and the
shrill tone of his voice, that rose high and sharp above the others in a
way that was quite foreign to his gentleness. Sir Simon saw this, and at
once divined the cause. It gave him a new pang. Poor Raymond! Driven to
this to keep his misery from bursting out and overwhelming him!
“Shall we finish our cigars here or in the library?” asked the baronet
when his own tired limbs suggested that a change of posture might be
generally agreeable.
As by tacit consent, the chairs were all pushed back and everybody rose.
The clock in the hall was striking ten.
“Do you know I think I must be going?” said Mr. Langrove. “Time slips
quickly by in pleasant company; I had no idea it was so late!”
“Nonsense! you are not going to leave us yet!” protested Sir Simon.
“Don’t mind the clocks here; they’re on wheels.”
“Are they?” said the vicar, and innocently pulled out his watch to
compare it with the loud chime that was still trembling in the air.
“Humph! I see your wheels are five minutes slower than mine!” he said,
with a nod and a laugh at his prevaricating host.
“Come, now, Langrove, never mind the time. ‘Hours were made for slaves,’
you know. Come in and have another cigar,” urged Sir Simon.
But the vicar was firm.
“Then I may as well go with you,” said M. de la Bourbonais; “it’s late
already for me to be out.”
Sir Simon was beginning to protest, when his attention was called away by
Lord Roxham.
“Have you that diamond ring, Harness?”
“What ring? Plover’s? No; I passed it to you to look at, and it didn’t
come round to me again. Can it not be found?”
“Oh! it’s sure to turn up in a minute!” said Mr. Plover. “It has slipped
under the edge of a plate, very likely!” And he went to the table and
began to look for it.
“Come, let us be going, as we are going,” said M. de la Bourbonais to the
vicar, and he went towards the door.
“Wait a bit,” replied Mr. Langrove--“wait a moment, Bourbonais; we must
see the end of this.”
“What have we to see in it? It is no concern of ours,” was the slightly
impatient rejoinder. Raymond was in that state of unnatural excitement
when the least trifle that crosses us chafes and irritates. He had
nothing for it, however, but to comply with the vicar’s fancy and wait.
“Most extraordinary!” Sir Simon exclaimed, as crystal dishes and
porcelain plates were lifted and moved, and silver filigree baskets
overturned and their delicate fruits sent rolling in every direction. “It
must have dropped; stand aside, everybody, while I look under the table.”
Every one drew off. Sir Simon flung up the ends of the snowy cloth, and,
taking a chandelier with several lights, set it on the floor and began
carefully to examine the carpet; but the ring was nowhere to be seen.
“If it is here, it is certain to be seen,” he said, still bent down.
“Look out, all of you, as you stand; you may see it flash better in the
distance.”
But no flash was anywhere visible. The wax-lights discovered nothing
brighter than the subdued colors of the rich Persian carpet. Sir Simon
went round to the other side of the table, and searched with the same
care and the same result.
“You are not an absent man, are you?” he said, lifting the chandelier
from the ground, and addressing the owner of the missing ring. “You are
not capable of slipping it into your pocket unawares?”
“I never did such a thing in my life; but that is no reason why I may not
have done it now. Old wine sometimes plays the deuce with one,” said Mr.
Plover, and he began to rummage his pockets and turn their contents on to
the table-cloth. Its whiteness threw every article into vivid relief; but
there was no ring.
“This is very singular, very extraordinary indeed!” said Sir Simon in
a sharp tone of annoyance. “Is any one hoaxing? Charlton, you’re not
playing a trick on us, are you?”
“What should I play such a stupid trick as that for?” demanded the young
man. “I’m not such an idiot; but here goes! Let us have my pockets on the
table too!”
And following his friend’s example, he turned them inside out, coat,
waistcoat, and trousers pockets in succession; but no ring appeared.
“It is time we all followed suit,” said Sir Simon, and he cleared a
larger space by sweeping away plates and glasses. “I am given to absence
of mind myself, and, as you say, I may have taken a glass more than was
good for me.”
As he spoke he turned out one pocket after another, with no other result
than to show the solidity and unblemished freshness of the linings; there
was not a slit or the sign of one anywhere where a diamond ring, or a
diamond without a ring, could have slipped through.
“Well, gentlemen, I invite you all to follow my example!” said the host,
stepping back from the table, and motioning for any one that liked to
advance. His voice had a ring of command in it that would have compelled
obedience if that had been necessary; but it did not seem to be so. One
after another the guests came up and repeated the operation, while the
owner of the ring watched them with a face that grew darker with every
disappointment. Mr. Langrove and M. de la Bourbonais were standing
somewhat apart from the rest near the door, and were now the only two
that remained. The vicar came first. He submitted his pockets to the same
rigorous scrutiny, and with the same result. A strange gleam passed over
Mr. Plover’s features, as he turned his sallow face in the direction of
M. de la Bourbonais. Suspicion and hope had now narrowed to this last
trial. Raymond did not move. “Come on, Bourbonais; I have done!” said
Mr. Langrove, consigning his spectacles and his handkerchief to his last
pocket.
But Raymond remained immovable, as if he were glued to the carpet.
“Come, my dear friend, come!” Sir Simon called out, in a voice that was
meant only to be kind and encouraging, but in which those who knew its
tones detected a nervous note.
“I will not!” said the count in a sharp, high key. “I will not submit to
such an indignity; it has been got up for the purpose of insulting me. I
refuse to submit to it!”
He turned to leave the room.
“Raymond, you are mad! You _must_ do it!” cried Sir Simon imperatively.
“I am not mad! I am poor!” retorted the count, facing round and darting
eyes of defiance at Sir Simon. “This person, who calls himself a
gentleman, has insulted me from the moment I sat down to table with him,
and you allowed him to do it. He taunted me with my poverty; he would
make out now that because I am poor I am a thief! I have borne with him
so far because I was at your table; but there is a limit to what I will
bear. I will not submit to the outrage he wants to put upon me.”
Again he turned towards the door.
“You shall hand out my ring before you stir from here, my fine sir!”
cried Mr. Plover, taking a stride after him, and stretching out an arm
as if to clutch him; but Sir Simon quick as thought intercepted him by
laying a hand on the outstretched arm, while Ponsonby Anwyll stepped
forward and placed his tall, broad figure like a bulwark between Raymond
and his assailant.
“Let me go!” said the latter, shaking himself to get free from the
baronet’s clasp; but the long, firm fingers closed on him like grim death.
“You shall not touch M. de la Bourbonais in my presence,” he said; “you
have insulted him, as he says, already. If I had seen that he detected
what was offensive in your tone and manner, I would not have suffered it
to pass. Stand back, and leave me to deal with him!”
“Confound the beggar! Let him give me my ring! I don’t want to touch him;
but as I live he doesn’t stir from this room till I’ve seen his breeches
pocket turned wrong-side out!”
The man had been drinking heavily, and, though he was still to all
intents and purposes sober, this excitement, added to that caused by
the wine, heated his blood to boiling-point. He looked as if he would
have flown at Raymond; but cowed by Sir Simon’s cool self-command and
determined will, he fell back a step, fastening his eyes on Raymond with
a savage glare.
Raymond meantime continued obstinate and impracticable. Mr. Langrove took
his hand in both his, and in the gentlest way entreated him to desist
from his suicidal folly; assuring him that he was the last man present
whom any one in his senses would dream of suspecting of a theft, of the
faintest approach to anything dishonorable, but that it was sheer madness
to refuse to clear himself in the eyes of this stranger. It was a mere
form, and meant no more for him than for the rest of them. But Raymond
turned a deaf ear to his pleading.
“Let me go! I will not do it! He has been insulting me from the
beginning. I will not submit to this,” he repeated, and shook himself
free from Mr. Langrove’s friendly grasp.
Sir Simon came close up to him. He was pale and agitated in spite of his
affected coolness, and his hand shook as he laid it on Raymond’s shoulder.
“Raymond, for my sake, for God’s sake!” he muttered.
But Raymond thrust away his hand, and said with bitter scorn: “Ha! I am a
beggar, and so I must be a thief! No, I will not clear myself! Let this
rich man go and proclaim me a thief!” And breaking away from them all, he
dashed out of the room.
“Hold! Stop him, or by ---- I’ll make hot work of it for you!” shouted
Mr. Plover, making for the door; but Ponsonby Anwyll set his back to it,
and defied him to pass. If the other had been brave enough to try, it
would have been a hopeless attempt; his attenuated body was no match
for the stalwart limbs of the young squire. He involuntarily recoiled as
if Ponsonby’s arms, stoutly crossed on his breast, had dealt him a blow.
Lord Roxham and Mr. Charlton pressed round him, expostulating and trying
to calm him. This was no easy task, and they knew it. They were terribly
shaken themselves, and they felt that it was absurd to expect this
stranger, fuming for his diamond, to believe that M. de la Bourbonais had
not taken it.
“No one but a madman would have done such a thing, when it’s as certain
as death to be found out,” said Sir Ponsonby, whose faith in Raymond was
sustained by another faith. “Besides, we all know he’s no more capable of
it than we are ourselves!”
“Very fine talk, but where is the ring? Who has taken it, if not this
Frenchman? I tell you what, he will be making out that it was his right
and his duty to steal from a rich man to help a poor one. Perhaps he’s
hard up just now, and he blesses Providence for the opportunity.”
“Remember, sir, that you are speaking of a gentleman who is my friend,
and whom I know to be incapable of an unworthy action,” said Sir Simon in
a stern and haughty tone.
“I compliment you on your friends; it sha’n’t be my fault if you don’t
see this one at the hulks before long. But curse me! now I think of it,
I’m at your mercy, all of you. I have to depend on you as witnesses, and
it seems the fashion in these parts for gentlemen to perjure themselves
to screen a friend; you will most likely refuse to swear to facts--if you
don’t swear against them, eh?”
“You must be drunk; you don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Mr.
Charlton, forgetting to drawl, and speaking quickly like a sensible man.
“It is as premature as it is absurd to imagine the ring is stolen; it
must be in the room, and it must be found.”
“In the room or out of it, it must and it shall be found!” echoed Mr.
Plover, “or if not.…”
“If not, it shall be paid for,” added Mr. Charlton; “it shall be
replaced.”
“Replaced! All you’re worth could not buy a stone like that one!”
“Not its duplicate as a god’s eye invested with magical virtue,” said Mr.
Charlton ironically; “but its value in the market can be paid, I suppose.
What price do you put on it?”
“As a mere stone it is worth five hundred pounds to any jeweller in
London.”
“Five hundred pounds!” repeated several in chorus with Mr. Charlton.
Sir Simon said nothing. A mist came before his eyes. He saw Raymond in
the grip of this cruel man, and he was powerless to release him. If the
dread was an act of disloyalty to Raymond, Sir Simon was scarcely to
blame. He would have signed away five years of his life that moment to
see M. de la Bourbonais cleared of the suspicion that he had so insanely
fastened on himself; but how could he help doubting? He knew as no one
else knew what the power of the temptation was which had--had it?--goaded
him to the mad act. Its madness was the strongest argument against its
possibility. To pocket a ring worth five hundred pounds--worth five
pounds--in the very teeth of the person it belonged to, and with the
clear certainty of being immediately detected--no one in his right mind
would have done such a thing. But was Raymond in his right mind when
he did it? Had he been in his right mind since he entered the house
to-night? There is such a thing as delirium of the heart from sorrow or
despair. Then he had been drinking a great deal more than usual, and wine
beguiles men to acts of frenzy unawares. If Sir Simon could even say to
this man, “I will pay you the five hundred pounds”; but he had not as
many pence to call his own. There had been a momentary silence after the
exclamation of surprise that followed the announcement of the value of
the diamond. Would Mr. Charlton not ratify his offer to pay for it? And
if he did not, what could save Raymond?
“Five hundred pounds! You are joking!” said the young man.
“We’ll see whether I am or not! I had the diamond valued with several
others at Vienna, where it was set,” said Mr. Plover.
“Consider me your debtor for the amount,” said Sir Ponsonby Anwyll,
stepping forward; “if the ring is not found to-night, I will sign you a
check for five hundred pounds.”
“Let us begin and look for it in good earnest,” said Lord Roxham. “We
will divide; two will go at each side of the table and hunt for it
thoroughly. It must have rolled somewhere into a crevice or a corner.”
“I don’t see how a ring was likely to roll on this,” said Mr.
Plover, scratching the thick pile of the carpet with the tip of his
patent-leather boot.
“Some of us may have kicked it to a distance in pushing back our
chairs,” suggested Mr. Langrove; “let us set the lights on the floor, and
divide as Lord Roxham proposes.”
Every one seized a chandelier or a lamp and set it on the floor, and
began to prosecute the search. They had hardly been two minutes thus
engaged when a loud ring was heard, and after a momentary delay the door
opened and M. de la Bourbonais walked in.
“Good heavens, Bourbonais! is it you?” cried Sir Simon, rising from his
knees and hastening to meet him.
But Raymond, with a haughty gesture, waved him off.
They were all on their feet in a moment, full of wonder and expectation.
“I made a mistake in refusing to submit to the examination you asked of
me,” said the count, addressing himself to all collectively. “I was wrong
to listen only to personal indignation in the matter; I saw only a poor
man insulted by a rich one. I have come back to repair my mistake. See
now for yourselves, and, if you like, examine every corner of my clothes.”
He advanced to the table, intending to suit the action to the words, when
a burst of derisive laughter was heard at the other end of the room. It
was from Mr. Plover. The others were looking on silent and confounded.
“Do you take us all for so many born fools?” cried Mr. Plover, and he
laughed again a short, contemptuous laugh that went through Raymond’s
veins.
He stood there, his right hand plunged into his pocket in the act of
drawing out its contents, but arrested by the sound of that mocking
laugh, and by the chill silence that followed. He cast a quick,
questioning glance at the surrounding faces; pity, surprise, regret,
were variously depicted there, but neither confidence nor congratulation
were visible anywhere. A gleam of light shot suddenly through his mind.
He drew out his hand and passed it slowly over his forehead.
“My God, have pity on me!” he murmured almost inaudibly, and turned away.
“Raymond! listen to me.” Sir Simon hurried after him.
But the door was closed. Raymond was gone. Sir Simon followed into the
hall, but he did not overtake him; the great door closed with a bang, and
the friend he loved best on earth was beyond his hearing, rushing wildly
on in the darkness and under the rain, that was falling in torrents.
The apparition had come and gone so quickly that the spectators might
have doubted whether they had not dreamt it or seen a ghost. No one
spoke, until Mr. Plover broke out with a hoarse laugh and an oath:
“If the fellow has not half convinced me of his innocence! He’s too great
a fool to be a thief!”
“Until he has been proved a thief, you will be good enough not to apply
the term to Monsieur de la Bourbonais under my roof,” said Sir Simon.
“Now, gentlemen, we will resume our search.”
They did, and prosecuted it with the utmost care and patience for more
than an hour; but the only effect was to fasten suspicion more closely on
the absent.
Mr. Plover was so triumphant one would have fancied the justification of
his vindictive suspicion was a compensation for the loss of his gem.
“Have you a pen and ink here, or shall I go into the library? I want to
write the check,” said Ponsonby.
“You will find everything you want in the library,” said Sir Simon,
and Ponsonby went in. Some one rang, and the carriages and horses were
ordered. In a few minutes Ponsonby returned with the check, which he
handed to Mr. Plover.
“If you require any one to attest my solvency, I dare say Charlton, whom
you can trust, will have no objection to do it,” he remarked.
“Certainly not!” said Mr. Charlton promptly.
“Oh! it’s not necessary; I’m quite satisfied with Sir Ponsonby Anwyll’s
signature,” Mr. Plover replied. And as he pocketed the check he went to
the window and raised the curtain to see if Mr. Charlton’s brougham had
come round. The rest of the company were saying good-by, cordial but sad.
Sir Simon and the young squire of Rydal stood apart, conversing in an
earnest, subdued voice.
“Have you a trap waiting, or shall I drop you at the vicarage?” inquired
Lord Roxham of Mr. Langrove.
“Thank you! I shall be very glad,” said the vicar. “The night promised to
be so fine I said I would walk home.”
“You will have a wet ride of it, Anwyll; is not that your horse I see?”
cried Mr. Charlton from the window, where he had followed his ill-omened
friend. “Had you not better leave him here for the night, and let me give
you a lift home?”
“Oh! thank you, no; I don’t mind a drenching, and it would take you too
far out of your way.”
Mr. Plover and Mr. Charlton were leaving the room when Sir Simon’s voice
arrested them.
“One moment, Charlton! Mr. Plover, pray wait a second. I need not
assure any one present how deeply distressed I am by what has occurred
to-night--distressed on behalf of every one concerned. I know you all
share this feeling with me, and I trust you will not refuse me the only
alleviation in your power.”
He stopped for a moment, while his hearers turned eager, responsive faces
towards him.
“I ask you as a proof of friendship, of personal regard and kindness to
myself, to be silent concerning what has happened under my roof to-night;
to let it remain buried here amongst ourselves. Will you grant me this,
probably the last favor I shall ever ask of you?”
His voice trembled a little; and his friends were touched, though they
did not see where the last words pointed.
There was a murmur of assent from all, with one exception.
“Plover, I hope I may include your promise with that of my older
friends?” continued the baronet, his voice still betraying emotion. “I
have no right, it is true, to claim such an act of self-denial at your
hands; I know,” he added with a faint laugh that was not ironical, only
sad--“I know that it is a comfort to us all to talk of our misfortunes
and complain of them to sympathizing acquaintances; but I appeal to you
as a gentleman to forego that satisfaction, in order to save me from a
bitter mortification.”
As he spoke, he held out his fine, high-bred hand to his guest.
Sir Simon did not profess to be a very deep reader of human nature, but
the most accomplished Macchiavellist could not have divined and touched
the right chords in his listener’s spirit with a surer hand than he
had just done. Mr. Plover laid his shrivelled fingers in the baronet’s
extended hand, and said with awkward bluntness:
“As a proof of personal regard for you, I promise to hold my tongue in
private life; but you can’t expect me not to take steps for the recovery
of the stone.”
“How so?” Sir Simon started.
“It is pretty certain to get into the diamond market before long, and,
unless the police are put on the watch, it will slip out of the country
most likely, and for ever beyond my reach, and I would give double the
money to get it back again. But I pledge myself not to mention the affair
except to the officers.”
He bowed another good-night to the company, and was gone. The rest
quickly followed, and soon the noise of wheels crushing the wet gravel
died away, and Sir Simon Harness was left alone to meditate on the events
of the evening and many other unpleasant things.
TO BE CONTINUED.
RECOLLECTIONS OF WORDSWORTH.[131]
BY AUBREY DE VERE, ESQ.
PART I.
It was about eight years before his death that I had the happiness of
making acquaintance with Wordsworth. During the next four years I saw
a good deal of him, chiefly among his own mountains, and, besides many
delightful walks with him, I had the great honor of passing some days
under his roof. The strongest of my impressions respecting him was that
made by the manly simplicity and lofty rectitude which characterized
him. In one of his later sonnets he writes of himself thus: “As a _true_
man who long had served the lyre”; it was because he was a true man that
he was a true poet; and it was impossible to know him without being
reminded of this. In any case he must have been recognized as a man of
original and energetic genius; but it was his strong and truthful moral
nature, his intellectual sincerity, the abiding conscientiousness of
his imagination, so to speak, which enabled that genius to do its great
work, and bequeath to the England of the future the most solid mass of
deep-hearted and authentic poetry which has been the gift to her of any
poet since the Elizabethan age. There was in his nature a veracity
which, had it not been combined with an idealizing imagination not
less remarkable, would to many have appeared prosaic; yet, had he not
possessed that characteristic, the products of his imagination would
have lacked reality. They might still have enunciated a deep and sound
philosophy; but they would have been divested of that human interest
which belongs to them in a yet higher degree. All the little incidents of
the neighborhood were to him important.
The veracity and the ideality which are so signally combined in
Wordsworth’s poetic descriptions of nature made themselves, at least, as
much felt whenever nature was the theme of his discourse. In his intense
reverence for nature he regarded all poetical delineations of her with
an exacting severity; and if the descriptions were not true, and true
in a twofold sense, the more skilfully executed they were the more was
his indignation roused by what he deemed a pretence and a deceit. An
untrue description of nature was to him a profaneness, a heavenly message
sophisticated and falsely delivered. He expatiated much to me one day,
as we walked among the hills above Grasmere, on the mode in which nature
had been described by one of the most justly popular of England’s modern
poets--one for whom he preserved a high and affectionate respect. “He
took pains,” Wordsworth said; “he went out with his pencil and note-book,
and jotted down whatever struck him most--a river rippling over the
sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory, and a mountain
ash waving its red berries. He went home, and wove the whole together
into a poetical description.” After a pause Wordsworth resumed with
a flashing eye and impassioned voice: “But nature does not permit an
inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil and
note-book at home; fixed his eye, as he walked, with a reverent attention
on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that could
understand and enjoy. Then, after several days had passed by, he should
have interrogated his memory as to the scene. He would have discovered
that while much of what he had admired was preserved to him, much was
also most wisely obliterated. That which remained--the picture surviving
in his mind--would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the
scene, and done so, in a large part, by discarding much which, though
in itself striking, was not characteristic. In every scene many of the
most brilliant details are but accidental. A true eye for nature does not
note them, or at least does not dwell on them.” On the same occasion he
remarked: “Scott misquoted in one of his novels my lines on Yarrow. He
makes me write,
“‘The swans on sweet St. Mary’s lake
Float double, swans and shadow.’
but I wrote,
“‘The _swan_ on _still_ St. Mary’s lake.’
“Never could I have written ‘swans’ in the plural. The scene when I saw
it, with its still and dim lake, under the dusky hills, was one of utter
loneliness; there was _one_ swan, and one only, stemming the water,
and the pathetic loneliness of the region gave importance to the one
companion of that swan--its own white image in the water. It was for
that reason that I recorded the swan and the shadow. Had there been
many swans and many shadows, they would have implied nothing as regards
the character of the scene, and I should have said nothing about them.”
He proceeded to remark that many who could descant with eloquence on
nature cared little for her, and that many more who truly loved her had
yet no eye to discern her--which he regarded as a sort of “spiritual
discernment.” He continued: “Indeed, I have hardly ever known any one
but myself who had a true eye for nature--one that thoroughly understood
her meanings and her teachings--except” (here he interrupted himself)
“one person. There was a young clergyman called Frederick Faber,[132]
who resided at Ambleside. He had not only as good an eye for nature
as I have, but even a better one, and sometimes pointed out to me on
the mountains effects which, with all my great experience, I had never
detected.”
Truth, he used to say--that is, truth in its largest sense, as a thing at
once real and ideal, a truth including exact and accurate detail, and yet
everywhere subordinating mere detail to the spirit of the whole,--this,
he affirmed, was the soul and essence not only of descriptive poetry, but
of all poetry. He had often, he told me, intended to write an essay on
poetry, setting forth this principle, and illustrating it by references
to the chief representatives of poetry in its various departments. It
was this twofold truth which made Shakspere the greatest of all poets.
“It was well for Shakspere,” he remarked, “that he gave himself to the
drama. It was that which forced him to be sufficiently human. His poems
would otherwise, from the extraordinarily metaphysical character of his
genius, have been too recondite to be understood. His youthful poems, in
spite of their unfortunate and unworthy subjects, and his sonnets also,
reveal this tendency. Nothing can surpass the greatness of Shakspere
where he is at his greatest; but it is wrong to speak of him as if even
he were perfect. He had serious defects, and not those only proceeding
from carelessness. For instance, in his delineations of character he does
not assign as large a place to religious sentiment as enters into the
constitution of human nature under normal circumstances. If his dramas
had more religion in them, they would be truer representations of man, as
well as more elevated and of a more searching interest.” Wordsworth used
to warn young poets against writing poetry remote from human interest.
Dante he admitted to be an exception; but he considered that Shelley,
and almost all others who had endeavored to outsoar the humanities, had
suffered deplorably from the attempt. I once heard him say: “I have
often been asked for advice by young poets. All the advice I can give
may be expressed in two counsels. First, let nature be your habitual and
pleasurable study--human nature and material nature; secondly, study
carefully those first-class poets whose fame is universal, not local, and
learn from them; learn from them especially how to observe and how to
interpret nature.”
Those who knew Wordsworth only from his poetry might have supposed that
he dwelt ever in a region too serene to admit of human agitations. This
was not the fact. There was in his being a region of tumult as well a
higher region of calm, though it was almost wholly in the latter that his
poetry lived. It turned aside from mere _personal_ excitements; and for
that reason, doubtless, it developed more deeply those special ardors
which belong at once to the higher imagination and to the moral being.
The passion which was suppressed elsewhere burned in his “Sonnets to
Liberty,” and added a deeper sadness to the “Yew-trees of Borrowdale.”
But his heart, as well as his imagination, was ardent. When it spoke
most powerfully in his poetry, it spoke with a stern brevity unusual in
that poetry, as in the poem, “There is a change, and I am poor,” and
the still more remarkable one, “A slumber did my spirit seal”--a poem
impassioned beyond the comprehension of those who fancy that Wordsworth
lacks passion, merely because in him passion is neither declamatory nor,
latently, sensual. He was a man of strong affections--strong enough on
one sorrowful occasion to withdraw him for a time from poetry.[133]
Referring once to two young children of his who had died about forty
years previously, he described the details of their illnesses with an
exactness and an impetuosity of troubled excitement such as might have
been expected if the bereavement had taken place but a few weeks before.
The lapse of time appeared to have left the sorrow submerged indeed, but
still in all its first freshness. Yet I afterwards heard that at the
time of the illness, at least in the case of one of the two children,
it was impossible to rouse his attention to the danger. He chanced
to be then under the immediate spell of one of those fits of poetic
inspiration which descended on him like a cloud. Till the cloud had
drifted he could see nothing beyond. Under the level of the calm there
was, however, the precinct of the storm. It expressed itself rarely but
vehemently, partaking sometimes of the character both of indignation
and sorrow. All at once the trouble would pass away and his countenance
bask in its habitual calm, like a cloudless summer sky. His indignation
flamed out vehemently when he heard of a base action. “I could kick such
a man across England with my naked foot,” I heard him exclaim on such
an occasion. The more impassioned part of his nature connected itself
especially with his political feelings. He regarded his own intellect
as one which united some of the faculties which belong to the statesman
with those which belong to the poet; and public affairs interested
him not less deeply than poetry. It was as patriot, not poet, that he
ventured to claim fellowship with Dante.[134] He did not accept the term
“reformer,” because it implied an organic change in our institutions,
and this he deemed both needless and dangerous; but he used to say that,
while he was a decided conservative, he remembered that to preserve our
institutions we must be ever improving them. He was, indeed, from first
to last, pre-eminently a patriot--an impassioned as well as a thoughtful
one. Yet his political sympathies were not with his own country only,
but with the progress of humanity. Till disenchanted by the excesses
and follies of the first French Revolution, his hopes and sympathies
associated themselves ardently with the new order of things created by
it; and I have heard him say that he did not know how any generous-minded
_young_ man, entering on life at the time of that great uprising, could
have escaped the illusion. To the end his sympathies were ever with the
cottage hearth far more than with the palace. If he became a strong
supporter of what has been called “the hierarchy of society,” it was
chiefly because he believed the principle of “equality” to be fatal to
the well-being and the true dignity of the poor. Moreover, in siding
politically with the crown and the coronets, he considered himself to be
siding with the weaker party in our democratic days.
The absence of love-poetry in Wordsworth’s works has often been remarked
upon, and indeed brought as a charge against them. He once told me that
if he had avoided that form of composition, it was by no means because
the theme did not interest him, but because, treated as it commonly
has been, it tends rather to disturb and lower the reader’s moral and
imaginative being than to elevate it. He feared to handle it amiss.
He seemed to think that the subject had been so long vulgarized that
few poets had a right to assume that they could treat it worthily,
especially as the theme, when treated unworthily, was such an easy
and cheap way of winning applause. It has been observed also that the
religion of Wordsworth’s poetry, at least of his earlier poetry, is
not as distinctly “revealed religion” as might have been expected from
this poet’s well-known adherence to what he has called emphatically “The
lord, and mighty paramount of truths.” He once remarked to me himself
on this circumstance, and explained it by stating that when in youth
his imagination was shaping for itself the channel in which it was to
flow, his religious convictions were less definite and less strong than
they had become on more mature thought; and that, when his poetic mind
and manner had once been formed, he feared that he might, in attempting
to modify them, have become constrained. He added that on such matters
he ever wrote with great diffidence, remembering that if there were
many subjects too low for song, there were some too high. Wordsworth’s
general confidence in his own powers, which was strong, though far from
exaggerated, rendered more striking and more touching his humility in
all that concerned religion. It used to remind me of what I once heard
Mr. Rogers say, viz.: “There is a special character of _greatness_ about
humility; for it implies that a man can, in an unusual degree, estimate
the _greatness_ of what is above us.” Fortunately, his diffidence did
not keep Wordsworth silent on sacred themes. His later poems include
an unequivocal as well as beautiful confession of Christian faith; and
one of them, “The Primrose of the Rock,” is as distinctly Wordsworthian
in its inspiration as it is Christian in its doctrine. Wordsworth was
a “High-Churchman,” and also, in his prose mind, strongly anti-Roman
Catholic, partly on political grounds; but that it was otherwise as
regards his mind poetic is obvious from many passages in his Christian
poetry, especially those which refer to the monastic system and the
Schoolmen, and his sonnet on the Blessed Virgin, whom he addresses as
“Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”
He used to say that the idea of one who was both Virgin and Mother had
sunk so deep into the heart of humanity that there it must ever remain.
Wordsworth’s estimate of his contemporaries was not generally high. I
remember his once saying to me: “I have known many that might be called
very _clever_ men, and a good many of real and vigorous _abilities_, but
few of genius; and only one whom I should call ‘wonderful.’ That one was
Coleridge. At any hour of the day or night he would talk by the hour, if
there chanced to be _any_ sympathetic listener, and talk better than the
best page of his writings; for a pen half paralyzed his genius. A child
would sit quietly at his feet and wonder, till the torrent had passed by.
The only man like Coleridge whom I have known is Sir William Hamilton,
Astronomer Royal of Dublin.” I remember, however, that when I recited
by his fireside Alfred Tennyson’s two political poems, “You ask me why,
though ill at ease,” and “Of old sat Freedom on the heights,” the old
bard listened with a deepening attention, and, when I had ended, said
after a pause, “I must acknowledge that those two poems are very solid
and noble in thought. Their diction also seems singularly stately.” He
was a great admirer of Philip van Artevelde. In the case of a certain
poet since dead, and little popular, he said to me: “I consider his
sonnets to be certainly the best of modern times”; adding, “Of course
I am not including my own in any comparison with those of others.” He
was not sanguine as to the future of English poetry. He thought that
there was much to be supplied in other departments of our literature,
and especially he desired a really great history of England; but he
was disposed to regard the roll of English poetry as made up, and as
leaving place for little more except what was likely to be eccentric or
imitational.
In his younger days Wordsworth had had to fight a great battle in poetry;
for both his subjects and his mode of treating them were antagonistic to
the maxims then current. It was fortunate for posterity, no doubt, that
his long “militant estate” was animated by some mingling of personal
ambition with his love of poetry. Speaking in an early sonnet of
“The poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth, and pure delight, by heavenly lays,”
he concludes:
“Oh! might my name be numbered among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days.”
He died at eighty, and general fame did not come to him till about
fifteen years before his death. This might perhaps have been fifteen
years too soon, if he had set any inordinate value on it. But it was
not so. Shelley tells us that “Fame is love disguised”; and it was
intellectual sympathy that Wordsworth had always valued far more than
reputation. “Give me thy love; I claim no other fee,” had been his demand
on his reader. When fame had laid her tardy garland at his feet, he found
on it no fresher green than his “Rydalian laurels” had always worn. Once
he said to me: “It is indeed a deep satisfaction to hope and believe
that my poetry will be, while it lasts, a help to the cause of virtue and
truth, especially among the young. As for myself, it seems now of little
moment how long I may be remembered. When a man pushes off in his little
boat into the great seas of Infinity and Eternity, it surely signifies
little how long he is kept in sight by watchers from the shore.”
Such are my chief recollections of the great poet, whom I knew but in
his old age, but whose heart retained its youth till his daughter Dora’s
death. He seemed to me one who from boyhood had been faithful to a high
vocation; one who had esteemed it his office to minister, in an age of
conventional civilization, at nature’s altar, and who had in his later
life explained and vindicated such lifelong ministration, even while he
seemed to apologize for it, in the memorable confession,
“But who is innocent? By grace divine,
Not otherwise, O Nature! are we thine.”[135]
It was to nature as first created, not to nature as corrupted by
“disnatured” passions, that his song had attributed such high and healing
powers. In singing her praise he had chosen a theme loftier than most
of his readers knew--loftier, as he perhaps eventually discovered,
than he had at first supposed it to be. Utterly without Shakspere’s
dramatic faculty, he was richer and wider in the humanities than any
poet since Shakspere. Wholly unlike Milton in character and in opinions,
he abounds in passages to be paralleled only by Milton in solemn and
spiritual sublimity, and not even by Milton in pathos. It was plain
to those who knew Wordsworth that he had kept his great gift pure,
and used it honestly and thoroughly for that purpose for which it had
been bestowed. He had ever written with a conscientious reverence for
that gift; but he had also written spontaneously. He had composed with
care--not the exaggerated solicitude which is prompted by vanity, and
which frets itself to unite incompatible excellences, but the diligence
which shrinks from no toil while eradicating blemishes that confuse a
poem’s meaning and frustrate its purpose. He regarded poetry as an art;
but he also regarded art, not as the compeer of nature, much less her
superior, but as her servant and interpreter. He wrote poetry likewise,
no doubt, in a large measure, because self-utterance was an essential
law of his nature. If he had a companion, he discoursed like one whose
thoughts must needs run on in audible current; if he walked alone among
his mountains, he murmured old songs. He was like a pine-grove, vocal
as well as visible. But to poetry he had dedicated himself as to the
utterance of the highest truths brought within the range of his life’s
experience; and if his poetry has been accused of egotism, the charge
has come from those who did not perceive that it was with a human, not
a mere personal, interest that he habitually watched the processes of
his own mind. He drew from the fountain that was nearest at hand what he
hoped might be a refreshment to those far off. He once said, speaking of
a departed man of genius, who had lived an unhappy life and deplorably
abused his powers, to the lasting calamity of his country: “A great poet
must be a great man; and a great man must be a good man; and a good man
ought to be a happy man.” To know Wordsworth was to feel sure that if he
had been a great poet, it was not merely because he had been endowed with
a great imagination, but because he had been a good man, a great man, and
a man whose poetry had, in an especial sense, been the expression of a
healthily happy moral being.
_P.S._--Wordsworth was by no means without humor. When the Queen, on one
occasion, gave a masked ball, some one said that a certain youthful poet,
who has since reached a deservedly high place both in the literary and
political world, but who was then known chiefly as an accomplished and
amusing young man of society, was to attend it dressed in the character
of the father of English poetry--grave old Chaucer. “What!” said
Wordsworth, “M---- go as Chaucer! Then it only remains for me to go as
M----!”
PART II.
SONNET--RYDAL WITH WORDSWORTH.
BY THE LATE SIR AUBREY DE VERE.
“What we beheld scarce can I now recall
In one connected picture; images
Hurrying so swiftly their fresh witcheries
O’er the mind’s mirror, that the several
Seems lost, or blended in the mighty all.
Lone lakes; rills gushing through rock-rooted trees;
Peaked mountains shadowing vales of peacefulness;
Glens echoing to the flashing waterfall.
Then that sweet twilight isle! with friends delayed
Beside a ferny bank ’neath oaks and yews;
The moon between two mountain peaks embayed;
Heaven and the waters dyed with sunset hues:
And he, the poet of the age and land,
Discoursing as we wandered hand in hand.”
The above-written sonnet is the record of a delightful day spent by
my father in 1833 with Wordsworth at Rydal, to which he went from the
still more beautiful shores of Ulswater, where he had been sojourning at
Halsteads. He had been one of Wordsworth’s warmest admirers when their
number was small, and in 1842 he dedicated a volume of poems to him.[136]
He taught me when a boy of eighteen years old to admire the great bard.
I had been very enthusiastically praising Lord Byron’s poetry. My father
calmly replied: “Wordsworth is the great poet of modern times.” Much
surprised, I asked: “And what may his special merits be?” The answer was,
“They are very various; as, for instance, depth, largeness, elevation,
and, what is rare in modern poetry, an _entire_ purity. In his noble
‘Laodamia’ they are chiefly majesty and pathos.” A few weeks afterwards
I chanced to take from the library shelves a volume of Wordsworth, and
it opened on “Laodamia.” Some strong, calm hand seemed to have been laid
on my head, and bound me to the spot till I had come to the end. As I
read, a new world, hitherto unimagined, opened itself out, stretching far
away into serene infinitudes. The region was one to me unknown, but the
harmony of the picture attested its reality. Above and around were indeed
“An ampler ether, a diviner air,
And fields invested with purpureal gleams”;
and when I reached the line,
“Calm pleasures there abide--majestic pains,”
I felt that no tenants less stately could walk in so lordly a precinct.
I had been translated into another planet of song--one with larger
movements and a longer year. A wider conception of poetry had become
mine, and the Byronian enthusiasm fell from me like a bond that is
broken by being outgrown. The incident illustrates poetry in one of
its many characters--that of the “deliverer.” The ready sympathies
and inexperienced imagination of youth make it surrender itself easily
despite its better aspirations, or in consequence of them, to a false
greatness; and the true greatness, once revealed, sets it free. As early
as 1824 Walter Savage Landor, in his “Imaginary Conversation” between
Southey and Porson, had pronounced Wordsworth’s “Laodamia” to be “a
composition such as Sophocles might have exulted to own, and a part of
which might have been heard with shouts of rapture in the regions he
describes”--the Elysian Fields.
Wordsworth frequently spoke of death, as if it were the taking of a
new degree in the University of Life. “I should like,” he remarked to
a young lady, “to visit Italy again before I move to another planet.”
He sometimes made a mistake in assuming that others were equally
philosophical. We were once breakfasting at the house of Mr. Rogers, when
Wordsworth, after gazing attentively round the room with a benignant and
complacent expression, turned to our host, and, wishing to compliment
him, said: “Mr. Rogers, I never see this house, so perfect in its taste,
so exquisite in all its arrangements, and decorated with such well-chosen
pictures, without fancying it the very house imaged to himself by the
Roman poet when, in illustration of man’s mortality, he says: ‘Linquenda
est domus.’” “What is that you’re saying?” replied Mr. Rogers, whose
years between eighty and ninety, had not improved his hearing. “I was
remarking that your house,” replied Wordsworth, “always reminds me of
the ode (more properly called an elegy, though doubtless the lyrical
measure not unnaturally causes it to be included among Horace’s odes)
in which the Roman poet writes: ‘Linquenda est domus’; that is, since,
ladies being present, a translation may be deemed desirable, _The house
is_, or _has to be, left_; and again,’et placens uxor’--and the pleasing
wife; though, as we must all regret, that part of the quotation is not
applicable on the present occasion.” The Town Bard, on whom “no angle
smiled” more than the end of St. James’ Place, did not enter into the
views of the Bard of the Mountains. His answer was what children call
“making a great face,” and the ejaculation, “Don’t talk Latin in the
society of ladies.” When I was going away, he remarked, “What a stimulus
the mountain air has on the appetite! I made a sign to Edmund to hand him
the cutlets a second time. I was afraid he would stick his fork into that
beautiful woman who sat next him.” Wordsworth never resented a jest at
his own expense. Once when we had knocked three times in vain at the door
of a London house, I exclaimed, quoting his sonnet written on Westminster
Bridge,
“Dear God, the very houses seem asleep.”
He laughed heartily, then smiled gravely, and lastly recounted the
occasion and described the early morning on which that sonnet was
written. He did not recite more than a part of it, to the accompaniment
of distant cab and carriage; and I thought that the door was opened too
soon.
Wordsworth, despite his dislike to great cities, was attracted
occasionally in his later years
“To the proud margin of the Thames
And Lambeth’s venerable towers,”
where his society was courted by persons of the most different character.
But he complained bitterly of the great city. It was next to impossible,
he remarked, to tell the truth in it. “Yesterday I was at S---- House;
the Duchess of S----, showing me the pictures, observed: ‘This is the
portrait of my brother’ (naming him), ‘and it is considered very like.’
To this I assented, partly perhaps in absence of mind, but partly, I
think, with an impression that her grace’s brother was probably a person
whose face every one knew or was expected to know; so that, as I had
never met him, my answer was in fact a lie! It is too bad that, when more
than seventy years old, I should be drawn from the mountains to London
in order to tell a lie!” He made his complaint wherever he went, laying
the blame, however, not so much on himself or on the duchess as on the
corrupt city; and some of those who learned how the most truthful man
in England had thus quickly been subverted by metropolitan snares came
to the conclusion that within a few years more no virtue would be left
extant in the land. He was likewise maltreated in lesser ways. “This
morning I was compelled by my engagements to eat three breakfasts--one
with an aged and excellent gentleman, who may justly be esteemed an
accomplished man of letters, although I cannot honestly concede to him
the title of a poet; one at a fashionable party; and one with an old
friend whom no pressure would induce me to neglect, although for this,
my first breakfast to-day, I was obliged to name the early hour of seven
o’clock, as he lives in a remote part of London.”
But it was only among his own mountains that Wordsworth could be
understood. He walked among them not so much to admire them as to
converse with them. They exchanged thoughts with him, in sunshine or
flying shadow, giving him their own and accepting his. Day and night,
at all hours, and in all weathers, he would face them. If it rained, he
might fling his plaid over him, but would take no admonition. He must
have his way. On such occasions, dutiful as he was in higher matters, he
remained incurably wayward. In vain one reminded him that a letter needed
an answer or that the storm would soon be over. It was very necessary
for him to do what he liked; and one of his dearest friends said to
me, with a smile of the most affectionate humor: “He wrote his ‘Ode to
Duty,’ and then he had done with that matter.” This very innocent form of
lawlessness, corresponding with the classic expression, “Indulge genio,”
seemed to belong to his genius, not less than the sympathetic reverence
with which he looked up to the higher and universal laws. Sometimes there
was a battle between his reverence for nature and his reverence for other
things. The friend already alluded to was once remarking on his varying
expressions of countenance: “That rough old face is capable of high and
real beauty; I have seen in it an expression quite of heavenly peace and
contemplative delight, as the May breeze came over him from the woods
while he was slowly walking out of church on a Sunday morning, and when
he had half emerged from the shadow.” A flippant person present inquired:
“Did you ever chance, Miss F----, to observe that heavenly expression on
his countenance as he was walking into church on a fine May morning?” A
laugh was the reply. The ways of nature harmonized with his feelings in
age as well as in youth. He could understand no estrangement. Gathering a
wreath of white thorn on one occasion, he murmured, as he slipped it into
the ribbon which bound the golden tresses of his youthful companion,
“And what if I enwreathed my own?
’Twere no offence to reason;
The sober hills thus deck their brows
To meet the wintry season.”
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._
FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
III.
“Ah! well, and so you are going to carry the French birds back!”
exclaimed the old keeper Jack, with a loud, coarse laugh, as he leaned
against one of the century-old trees in Windsor forest. “Well, well, so
be it, my friends; but give us a little drop to drink,” he added in a
jocular but self-important tone. As he said these words, he familiarly
slapped the shoulder of one of the falconers, who was engaged in
fastening the chains again to the feet of the tiercelets, whilst his
comrades cut off the heads of the game taken, and threw them as a reward
to the cruel birds, who devoured them with avidity.
“After a while,” replied the falconer a little impatiently. “Wait till
our work is done, father Jack; you are always in a hurry--to drink. We
will take our glass together now directly. See that troop of birds! They
must first be chained and put with the others.”
“Well, well!” replied Jack, “provided we lose nothing by waiting. These
are beautiful birds, if they do come from France.”
“No, no, you shall lose nothing by waiting,” cried the second falconer.
“Come here; I will let you taste a liquid that these birds have brought
over under their wings, and we will see then if you have ever drunk
anything equal to it since you drew on your boots in the service of his
majesty.”
And he poured out of a canteen that hung from his shoulder-belt a very
acid gin, filling, until it foamed over, a large pewter cup, which he
handed to father Jack.
It was swallowed at one draught.
“Oh! superb, superb!” cried the old keeper, returning the cup and
smacking his lips. “During the five-and-forty years past that I have had
the honor of keeping Windsor, I have drunk nothing better. Let’s go! That
strengthens a man’s courage and warms up his old blood! I believe the
deer will give us a hard drive to-day; I have seen the tracks of fourteen
or fifteen at least.” And saying this, he remounted his old wind-broken
mare.
“Wait, father Jack, wait for us! We will all go together,” exclaimed the
_gens de l’equipage_; for Jack contributed much to their amusement. When
they had mounted their horses, they followed the keeper, getting off a
hundred jokes on the old mare, to which he was much attached.
They very soon passed by two young lords who had halted near the verge of
the forest, and were engaged in conversation.
One of them held in leash four beautiful greyhounds, especial favorites
of the king because of their great sagacity and swiftness in the chase.
Their keeper, however, was obliged to use the lash, in order to stop
their clamorous baying.
“You have seen her, then?” he remarked to his companion.
“Yes, I have seen her down yonder. She crossed the road with all of her
ladies,” replied the latter, who belonged to Wolsey’s household and wore
his livery. “She was dressed in a black velvet cap and green riding-habit
and she is really charming!”
“Well, my poor friend,” replied the other, “but do you know I have
serious fears that your cardinal will soon fall into disfavor? But a
moment ago, as they passed by here, I heard the Duke of Norfolk remark
to a lady that the red cloak was decidedly out of style, and altogether
it was at this time so completely used up that he did not think it could
ever again be mended. The lady smiled maliciously, and said he was
right--she believed the green mantle would eventually end by tearing the
red to pieces! And pointing to the young Anne Boleyn, who was not far
off, she made a sign that left no doubt on my mind it was that lady she
meant to designate as the destroyer.”
“Truly,” replied the young domestic,[137] “what you tell me is anything
but encouraging. And so our dear duke must have _his_ finger in the pie!
I shall be very sorry for all this if it happens, because my own clothes,
are made of scarlet, you see; and when one has succeeded, in the course
of time, in getting a suit well made up, he doesn’t like the trouble of
having to commence again and make it over.”
As he said this a cloud of dust arose, and a troop of horsemen passed at
full gallop and with a terrible hue and cry.
“My dogs! my dogs!” cried the king in the midst of the crowd. “Let
loose my dogs! The deer makes for the ponds. Let them hasten to tell the
ladies, that they may be in at the death.”
He disappeared like a flash of lightning, of which we obtain but a
glimpse ere it is gone. The shrill notes of the hunter’s horn resounded
from afar, awaking countless echoes through the forest.
“Let us go,” exclaimed the two young men simultaneously. “We will then
get rid of these accursed hounds.”
“To the ponds! To the ponds!” they cried. “The ladies, to the ponds! The
ladies, to the ponds!” And they started on, laughing and shouting.
“What is that you are shouting down there?” cried a huntsman from a
distance, whose horse had just made him roll in the dust.
“To the ponds! My lord, to the ponds!” they cried.
The retinue surrounding the Duke of Suffolk put whip to their horses and
followed in a sweeping gallop. From every side of the hills surrounding
these ponds there appeared, at the same moment, troops of eager hunters,
panting and covered with dust. The different roads traversing the forest
in every direction converged and met on the banks of the ponds that slept
in the basin thus formed.
The ladies had already assembled, and nothing could have been more
entertaining than the rapid and eager movements of the remainder of the
hunters as they came galloping up. The king arrived before any of the
others. He excelled in exercises of this kind, and took great delight
in ending the chase in a brilliant manner by shooting the deer himself.
On this occasion he had decided that, contrary to the usual custom, it
should be taken alive; consequently, they hastened to spread in every
direction the nets and fillets.
In this case the skill of the hunters consisted in driving the game into
the snare.
Very soon the deer made his appearance, followed by a multitude of
hounds, who pursued him so furiously, and crowded so closely one against
the other, that, to use a familiar expression of the hunters, they could
have been covered with a table-cloth.
At sight of the nets the beautiful animal paused for an instant. He
shook his horns menacingly, and stamped the ground with his feet; then
suddenly, feeling already the scorching breath of the infuriated pack
of hounds about to seize him, he made a desperate effort, and, leaping
at a single bound the entire height of the fillets, threw himself into
the lake. Instantly a loud and deafening shout arose, while the furious
hounds, arrested in their course by the nets, uttered the most frightful
howlings on seeing their prey escape.
“My cross-bow!” cried the king. “Quick! my cross-bow!” and he drew it so
skilfully that at the first shot he pierced the flank of the poor animal,
who immediately ceased to swim.
Satisfied with his brilliant success, the king, after having heard the
plaudits of the ladies and received the congratulations of the hunters,
proceeded to the pavilion, constructed of evergreens and foliage, as
elegant as it was spacious, which he had had erected in the midst of the
forest, in order to dine under cover.
The Duchess of Suffolk did the honors of the festival, taking the place
of Queen Catherine, who, under the pretext of bad health, declined
appearing at these hunting parties, the noisy sports having become
insupportable to her.
Meanwhile the courtiers were greatly excited by observing a roll of paper
the extremity of which projected from the right pocket of the king’s
hunting-jacket; on one of the leaves, a corner of which was turned down,
two words were visible--the name of “Wolsey” and that of “traitor.” Each
one sought to approach the king or pass behind him in order to assure
himself of the astonishing fact, of which they had the temerity to
whisper mysteriously together.
But in spite of all their efforts, they were unable to discover anything
more; the day and the festival ended with numerous conjectures--the
fears and hopes excited in the minds of that court where for so long the
learned favorite had ruled with as much authority as the king himself.
* * * * *
At daybreak on the morning succeeding the festival the gates were thrown
open, and a carriage, bearing the royal arms and colors, drove from the
great courtyard of Windsor Palace.
While the postilion trotted leisurely along, looking around from time
to time as he wonderingly reflected why the horse on his right grew
constantly lean in spite of the generous addition he had made to his
rations, the two occupants of the carriage engaged in the following
conversation:
“It is cold this morning,” said one of them, wrapping his cloak more
closely about him.
“Yes; and how this fog and the heavy dew covering the earth remind one of
the bivouac!”
“It does indeed,” responded Norfolk to his companion; “but such
souvenirs are always agreeable, and carry us back to the happiest days
of life--years spent amid the tumult and vicissitudes of the camp.
Eighteen! that impulsive, impetuous age, when presumptuous courage rushes
headlong into danger, comprehending nothing of death; when reckless
intrepidity permits not a moment’s reflection or hesitation, transported
by the ardent desire of acquiring glory; the intoxicating happiness of a
first success--such are the thrilling emotions, the brilliant illusions
of youth, which we shall experience no more!” And the old warrior
sorrowfully bowed his head.
“Ah! well, others replace them,” replied Suffolk.
“Yes, to be displaced and disappear in their turn,” answered the duke,
brushing back the white locks the wind had blown over his forehead, on
which appeared a deep scar.
“Well, my lord,” exclaimed the Duke of Suffolk, “do not spoil, by
your philosophic reflections, all the pleasure we ought to enjoy in
the thought that, thanks to the influence and good management of your
charming niece, we are now going to inform Monseigneur Wolsey that the
time has at last arrived for him to abdicate his portion of the crown.”
“Yes, perhaps so,” replied the duke. “And yet I don’t know. Yesterday,
even, I detested this man, and desired most ardently his ruin;
to-day--no, no; an enemy vanquished and prostrate at my feet inspires
only compassion. Now I almost regret the injury my niece has done him and
the blow she has struck.”
“Come, come, my lord, do you not know that an excess of generosity
becomes a fault? We have nothing to regret,” continued Suffolk, with an
exulting laugh. “I only hope he may not be acquitted (and thus be able to
settle the scores with us afterwards); that Parliament will show him no
mercy. Death alone can effectually remove him. The little memorandum you
have there contains enough to hang all the chancellors in the world.”
“It is very certain,” replied the Duke of Norfolk, abstractedly turning
the leaves of the book he held in his hand (the same that had excited
such eager curiosity among the courtiers)--“it is certain this book
contains grave accusations. Nevertheless, I do not think it has entirely
accomplished the end proposed by the author.”
“In truth, no,” answered Suffolk; “for Wiltshire counted very certainly
on replacing Wolsey. He will be astounded when he learns of the choice of
the king.”
“Although Wiltshire is a relative of mine,” replied the duke, “I am
compelled to acknowledge that it would have been impossible for the king
to have made a better selection or avoided a worse one. Wiltshire is both
ignorant and ambitious, while Thomas More has no superior in learning
and merit. I knew him when quite a child, living with the distinguished
Cardinal Morton, who was particularly attached to him. I remember very
often at table Morton speaking of him to us, and always saying: ‘This
young boy will make an extraordinary man. You will see it. I shall not be
living, but you will then recall the prediction of an old man.’”
“Extraordinary!” replied Suffolk in his habitual tone of raillery;
“most extraordinary! We are promised, then, a chancellor of a peculiar
species! I suppose he will not be the least astonished at receiving so
high and singular a favor. But, the devil! he will need to be a wonderful
man. If he sustains himself on the throne ministerial, he will find a
superior degree of wisdom necessary. Between the king, the queen, the
council, Wiltshire, the Parliament, the clergy, and the people, I would
not risk my little finger, brother-in-law of his majesty although I have
the honor to be.”
And he began laughing as he looked at Norfolk, although, out of deference
to him, he had not included in the list of difficulties the most
formidable of all, and the one that carried all others in its train--his
niece, Mlle. Anne.
“In the sense you use the word,” the duke answered coldly, “I believe,
on the contrary, he is by no means an astute man. The intrigues of court
will be altogether foreign to his character; but otherwise, in science
and learning, he has no equal. He is in possession of all that a man
is capable of acquiring in that direction, and no man has made a more
profound study of the common law and the statutes of the kingdom. Morton
placed him at Oxford, then at the Chancellors’ College at Lincoln, and he
achieved the most brilliant success.”
“Admirable!” exclaimed Suffolk, laughing.
“Since that time,” pursued the Duke of Norfolk, “his reputation has
continued to increase. When he lectured in S. Lawrence’s Church, the
celebrated Dr. Grocyn and all of our London _savants_ crowded eagerly to
hear him.”
“Well! well! I knew nothing of these most agreeable particulars,” said
Suffolk; “I only knew that it was he who induced Parliament to refuse
the subsidy demanded for the Queen of Scots. If he continues to repeat
such exploits as that, I venture to predict he will not be chancellor
very long.”
“Oh! as to that,” replied the duke, “he is a man who will never
compromise his conscience. Yes, yes, I recall distinctly the enraged
expression of the present king’s father when Mr. Tyler came to inform him
that the House of Commons had rejected his demand, and a beardless youth
had been the cause of it. I have not forgotten, either, that Henry VII.,
of happy memory, well knew how to avenge himself by having an enormous
fine imposed on Sir Thomas’ father.”
“Well,” replied Suffolk, “but it was not always expedient for the House
of Commons to raise money in that way.”
The conversation was continued in this manner, as the hours glided by,
until at length the glittering spires of the London churches appeared in
the distance, and very soon the carriage had entered the narrow, gloomy
streets of that great city.
* * * * *
Just at this time the soul of Wolsey was replenished with an
inexpressible quietude and contentment. “At last,” he said to himself,
“my enemies have all been confounded. I can no longer entertain a doubt
respecting my power, after the most gracious manner in which the king
has treated me at Grafton. I trust the influence of Anne Boleyn has
diminished in the same proportion that mine has increased. Now she wants
Sir Thomas Cheney recalled; but I shall not consent to that. Campeggio
goes loaded with honorable presents. The influence of the mistress
will soon cease, and that ambitious fool Wiltshire will lose the fruit
of his intrigues.…” As the Cardinal of York consoled himself with these
agreeable reflections, the arrival of the Venetian ambassador was
announced.
“Ah! so he presents himself at last,” Wolsey exclaimed. “He has been a
long time demanding an audience!” And he ordered him to be introduced.
Wolsey received him in the most gracious manner. After the usual
compliments were exchanged, he proposed showing him the honors of the
palace. He had spent his life in embellishing and adorning it with
wonderful treasures of industry and art, of which he was the enlightened
and generous protector, bestowing on them from his own purse the most
liberal encouragement.
Numerous galleries, in which an exquisite taste had evidently directed
even the most trivial ornamentation, were filled with paintings, statues,
and precious antique vases. Superb Flanders tapestries gleamed on all
sides, covered the panels, were disposed around the windows, and fell in
heavy drapery before the openings of the doors to conceal the entrance.
These precious cloths, then of inestimable value, were only found in the
palaces of kings. They usually represented some historical or poetical
subject; and sometimes landscapes and the rarest flowers were wrought and
tinted with reflections of gold. Finally, Wolsey took occasion to point
out, among all these treasures, the presents he had received at different
times from the various princes of Europe who had sought to secure his
influence.
Charmed with the order, taste, and beauty that reigned throughout the
palace, the Italian admired everything, surprised to find in this foreign
clime a condition of luxury that recalled the memory, always pleasing,
yet sometimes sad, of his own country.
“Alas!” he exclaimed at length, “we also were rich and happy, and reposed
in peace and security in our palaces, before this war in which we have
been so unfortunate as to rely on the King of France for assistance. He
has abandoned us; and now, compelled to pay an enormous tribute, the
republic finds itself humiliated in the dust beneath the sceptre of the
haughty emperor!”
“Such is the right of the conqueror,” replied Wolsey. “You are fortunate,
inasmuch as he is forced to use that right with moderation.”
“It seems a heavy burden to us, this moderation!” replied the ambassador.
“He not only exacts immense sums of money, but compels us to surrender
territory we have conquered with our blood. Florence is placed under the
dominion of the Medici, and all of our Italian princes are reduced to a
condition of entire dependence.”
“Which, of course, they will shake off at the first opportunity,”
interrupted Wolsey. “Charles V. is too shrewd not to foresee that. Be
assured he will endeavor to secure your good-will, because your support
is indispensable to enable him to resist the formidable power of the
Sultan Soliman, and the invasions of the barbarians subject to his
authority.”
“In that we have placed our last hope. If our services can be made
available, then from vanquished enemies we may become united allies.
Already the emperor foresees it; for he overwhelms Andrew Doria and the
republic of Genoa with favors. He seems to have forgotten the injuries he
suffered from Sforza; he received him most affably at court, and promised
him the Princess of Denmark, his niece, in marriage.”
“I am informed,” said Wolsey, “that he is deeply afflicted by the death
of the Prince of Orange.”
“Very much,” replied the ambassador. “The prince was a valiant captain.
He leaves no children; his titles and landed property will descend to the
children of his sister Rénée, the Countess of Nassau.”
“And they are all German princes who have thrown themselves headlong
into the Lutheran heresy. They will endeavor to cast off the yoke of the
emperor, and become altogether independent.”
“They have no other intention,” replied the ambassador; “and by
separating from the Church of Rome they hope more surely to effect their
purpose. However, the decree laid before the diet against the religious
innovations has passed by a large majority.”
“Yes,” replied Wolsey; “but you see the Elector of Saxony, the Marquis
of Brandenburg, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Dukes of Luneburg, and the
Prince d’Anhalt are all leagued against the church, with the deputies of
fourteen imperial cities, and are designated by no other name than that
of Protestant.”
“I am aware of that,” replied the ambassador. “It will greatly increase
the difficulties in carrying out the emperor’s secret project,” he
continued after a moment’s silence. “Perhaps, however, he may succeed in
making the crown hereditary in his family.”
“That is what we shall have to prevent!” cried Wolsey vehemently, who,
at the words of the ambassador, felt all his old hatred toward Charles V.
revive. “We will never suffer it, neither will France. No, no; I am very
certain France will never permit it.”
“Ah!” replied the ambassador, shaking his head with a doubtful air,
either because he was not convinced, but more probably because he was
well pleased to arouse against the conqueror of Venice the animosity of
England (still, as he considered, entirely governed by the will of the
minister who stood before him).
“I assure you of it most positively,” answered Wolsey; “and I wish you
to bear it in mind.” And he regarded him with an expression of perfect
confidence and authority.
“I hope it may be so,” said the ambassador in an abstracted manner. “We
certainly desire nothing more.”
“Ah! if he had only you to oppose him,” answered Wolsey, resuming his
usual haughtiness, “I should doubt of success. See where you stand,” he
continued, with the secret satisfaction of national pride. “Invaded on
all sides, Italy can oppose but a feeble barrier to the power of two
such bold and daring pirates. Is it not a shame, then, to see these
obscure and cruel robbers, sons of a Lesbian potter--two barbarians, in
fact--reigning sovereigns of the kingdom of Algiers, which they have
seized, and from whence they fearlessly go forth to destroy the Christian
fleets on every sea? When would you be able to conquer these ocean
pirates--you, who have but a gibbet for your couch and a halter for your
vestment? Justice would be kept a long time waiting!”
The Italian reddened and bit his lip. He vainly sought words in which
to reply, and was relieved of his embarrassment when the door opened and
admitted the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk.
They entered without the usual ceremonies or salutations, and Wolsey,
surprised at seeing Suffolk, whom he had not met since the altercation
at Blackfriars, regarded them with astonishment. He arose, however, and
advanced toward them. Suffolk, with a disdainful gesture, referred him to
the Duke of Norfolk.
Astonished at the coldness of the one, the brusque impoliteness of the
other, and embarrassed by the presence of the ambassador, the cardinal
stood motionless, undecided what to think or say.
“My lords,” he at length exclaimed, “what do you desire of me?”
“We want you to deliver up the seal of state,” replied Norfolk, without
changing countenance.
“What do you say, my lord?” cried Wolsey, stupefied with astonishment.
“The king has ordered it,” continued the duke with the same imperturbable
manner.
“The king! Can it be possible?” said Wolsey, dismayed, and in a voice
almost inaudible. “The seal of state! And what have I done? What? Can
this be true? No, my lord, no,” he suddenly exclaimed with an expression
of indescribable terror; “it cannot be true! You have mistaken the king;
I do not deserve any such treatment. I pray you let me see him; let me
speak to him for a moment--one single moment. Alas! alas!”
And he glanced at the ambassador, who, astounded himself at first, and
feeling himself out of place in the presence of this mighty downfall,
had involuntarily withdrawn towards the door.
“It is no longer a question to be submitted to the king,” cried Suffolk
in a threatening and defiant manner; “it is only necessary now to obey
him, and he orders you instantly to deliver up the seal.”
“The order is imperative,” added Norfolk in a cold and serious manner. “I
regret being charged with a commission which to you, my lord, must be so
painful.”
He said no more. But Suffolk, base and jealous in his nature, was not
ashamed to add to the humiliation of the unfortunate cardinal.
“Come, my good friend,” he said in an ironical voice, “why do you beg so
imploringly? One would suppose we had demanded the apple of your eye. You
have been putting the seal so long now on our purses and tongues, you
ought not to be surprised nor annoyed that we feel like using it awhile
ourselves.”
This cowardly insult exasperated Wolsey, but his courage was roused with
his indignation.
“My Lord Suffolk,” he answered with dignity, “I am sorry for you and
for the prompt manner in which you seem to forget in their misfortune
those who in days of prosperity were always found ready to come to your
assistance. I hope you may never experience how painful it is to endure a
similar cruel ingratitude.”
He immediately withdrew, and returned with the richly-adorned casket
containing the great seal of state.
Holding it in his trembling hand, he avoided Suffolk, and, advancing
rapidly toward the Duke of Norfolk, handed it to him.
“My lord,” he said, “here are the seals of the kingdom of England.
Let the king’s will be done. Since I received them from his hand,
fifteen years ago, I am conscious of having done nothing to merit his
displeasure. I trust he will one day deign to render me full justice, for
I have never proved myself unworthy of his favor.”
As he uttered the last words, he was unable to restrain the tears which
involuntarily arose to his eyes.
Although the cardinal was by no means a favorite with the Duke of
Norfolk, he was moved with compassion, and sadly reflected that he had
still more painful intelligence to communicate.
He glanced at his companion, but, fearing the bitter and poignant irony
in which Suffolk never failed to indulge, he hastened to prevent it in
order to spare Wolsey.
“My lord cardinal,” he said, “you ought to reflect that the king is too
just and impartial to withdraw the favor he has so long bestowed on you
without having weighed well the reasons and necessities requiring such
a course. Nevertheless, his goodness has not abandoned you; he permits
you to select such counsel as you may desire to defend you against the
accusations presented against you to Parliament.”
“To Parliament!” murmured Wolsey, terror-stricken; for the duke’s last
words suddenly disclosed the depth of the abyss into which he had fallen.
“To Parliament!” he repeated. The shock he had experienced was so
violent that his pride of character, the sense of personal dignity, the
presence of his enemies, were all forgotten in a moment, and he abandoned
himself to despair. Unable longer to sustain himself, he sank on his
knees. “I am lost!” he cried, weeping and extending his hands toward
his persecutors. “Have pity on me, my Lord Norfolk! I give up all to
the king! Let him do with me what he will! Since he says I am culpable,
although I have never had the intention, yet I will acknowledge that I
am. But, alas! of what do they accuse me?”
“Of having violated the statutes of præmunire,” replied Norfolk.
“And betraying your country,” continued Suffolk, “by carrying on a secret
correspondence with the King of France. You well remember that it was you
who had me recalled at the moment when, having become master of Artois
and Picardy, I had the Parisians trembling within their walls? Will you
dare deny that you were the cause of it, and that it was the _prière
d’argent_ of Mme. Louise[138] induced you to give the order for me to
retire? The king has been already long enough your dupe, and our duty was
to enlighten him. As to the rest, my lord cardinal, you understand the
proceedings; your advocate ought to be here, and you should immediately
confer with him with regard to the other charges herein contained.”
As he said this, he threw on the cardinal’s table the bill of
presentment, which contained no less than forty-four chief accusations.
They then took possession of all the papers they could find, carrying
away the seal of state, and left Wolsey in a condition deserving pity.
As they retired, they proposed sending in the advocate, who was waiting
in an adjoining apartment conversing with Cromwell.
“Ha! ha! you are here, then, Sir Cromwell,” said the Duke of Suffolk,
laughing. “Go in, go in there at once,” he cried, pointing to the door
of Wolsey’s cabinet. “The cardinal needs you; I fear he will be hard to
console.”
Cromwell watched with great anxiety the course of events, and, not
knowing to which side to turn, determined at least to secure for
himself the appearance and merit of fidelity to his benefactor. Without
reflecting on the consequences, he hastily replied that he would not
leave Wolsey, would never abandon him, but follow him to the end.
“You will follow him to the end, eh?” replied Suffolk. “When you know his
intended destination, I doubt very much if you will then ask to follow
him.”
As he said this, he made a gesture giving Cromwell to understand that his
master, besides losing place and power, was also in danger of losing his
head.
“High treason, my dear sir, high treason!” cried Suffolk. “Do you hear
me?”
“High treason?” repeated Cromwell slowly. “Ah! my lord duke, how could he
be guilty?”
He hastened to rejoin Wolsey, whom he found bathed in tears and
endeavoring to decipher the act of presentment.
“Ah! Cromwell,” exclaimed the unhappy cardinal on seeing him, “my dear
friend, you have not then forsaken me! But, alas! I am lost. Read here
for yourself--read it aloud to me; for my sight is failing.”
Cromwell seized the paper and commenced reading the accusation. On
hearing that it was based principally on the violation of the statutes of
præmunire,[139] Wolsey was unable to control his indignation.
“How,” he cried, “can the king be induced to sanction such unparalleled
injustice? It is true that in receiving from the pope the title of
legate, and exercising throughout the kingdom the authority conferred
by that title, I have been brought in opposition to the precautionary
statutes of King Richard; but still I have not violated them, since the
king himself has sanctioned that power and recognized it by appearing
in his own person before the court. Is he not more to blame, then, who
desired and ordered it, than I, who have simply been made a party to it?
I can prove this,” he cried--“yes, I can prove it; for I have still the
letters-patent, signed by his own hand, and which he furnished me to that
effect. Cromwell, look in my secretary; you will find them there.”
Cromwell opened the secretary, but found nothing.
“There is not a single paper here,” he said. “Where could you have placed
them?”
“Indeed!” exclaimed the cardinal. “Then they have all been carried away!
All!” he repeated. “I have no longer any means of defence; I am lost!
They are all arrayed against me; they have resolved upon my death. O
Henry! O my king! is it thus you forget in one moment the services I
have rendered you? Cromwell,” he continued in a low voice and gloomy,
abstracted manner--“Cromwell, I am lost!”
The same evening another messenger came to inform the unhappy cardinal
the king wished to occupy, during the session of Parliament he was about
to convene, his palace of York (the object of his care and pride), and
that in leaving it he could retire to, and have at his disposal, a house
about eight leagues from London, entirely abandoned, and belonging to the
bishopric of Winchester.
* * * * *
The night, already far advanced, found Sir Thomas More still seated in
his cabinet, conversing with the Bishop of Rochester, who had arrived at
Chelsea very late that morning.
A light was burning on a long table encumbered with books and papers;
several high-backed chairs, covered with black morocco, cast their
shadows on the walls; a capacious rug of white sheep-skin was spread
before the hearth, where the remains of a fire still burned in the grate.
Such was the simplicity of the home of Sir Thomas More.
“And why, my dear friend,” asked the Bishop of Rochester, “will you
consent to take upon your shoulders so terrible a responsibility? Once
become chancellor, have you fully considered that you will be surrounded
by enemies, who will watch your every movement and pursue you even to
your death? Have you reflected well that you acknowledge no other laws
than those of your own conscience, and feel no remorse unless for not
having spoken your views with sufficient candor? Is it thus you hope to
resist--thus you hope to escape the snares that will continually surround
you?”
“I fear nothing,” replied More; “for I believe in God! And you
yourself--would you not blame such weakness? In refusing the king I
refuse the queen. Would not Catherine then declare that the trusted
servant, even he who had been called her friend, had sacrificed her
interests to his love of ease? He had declared his life should be devoted
to her cause, and now had abandoned and deprived her of the only hope of
relief Providence seemed to have left her! No, Fisher, friendship has
rights too sacred for me not to respect them.”
“Then,” cried the bishop, “if you respect the rights of friendship,
listen to my appeal! I ask you to decline a dignity that will prove
destructive to you. In the name of all that you hold most dear, in the
name of all that is good and beautiful in nature, in the entire universe,
I conjure you to refuse this fatal honor! It is more than probable the
very seal they wish now to place in your hands will be very soon affixed
to your death-warrant! Believe me, my friend, all will unite against you.
A deep conviction has taken possession of my soul, and I see, I feel, the
wrath of this prince, as violent as he is cruel, ready to fall upon your
devoted head. You will be crushed in this struggle, too unequal to admit
for an instant the hope of escape.”
“Ah! well,” replied More laughingly, “instead, then, of simply inscribing
on my tombstone ‘Here lies Thomas More,’ there will appear in pompous
style the inscription, ‘Here lies the Lord High Chancellor of England.’
Assuredly, I think that would sound much better, and I shall take care to
bequeath my first quarter’s salary to defray the expense of so elegant an
inscription.”
“More!” cried the Bishop of Rochester with impatience, “I cannot suffer
you to jest on a subject of such grave importance. Do you, then, desire
to die? Would you ruin yourself? Trust to my experience. I know the heart
of Henry thoroughly; your attempt to save the queen will be vain, and
you will inevitably be involved in her ruin. I conjure you, then, accept
not this office. I will myself carry your refusal to the king.”
“No, no!” exclaimed More. “I have decided--decided irrevocably.”
“Irrevocably?” repeated Rochester, whom the thought reduced almost to
despair. “More, I see it. You have become ambitious; the vainglory of
the world, the fatal infatuation of its honors, have taken possession
even of the soul of Thomas More! Your heart no longer responds to mine;
your ear remains deaf to all my solicitations! Ah! well, since the desire
of being honored among men, and to have them grovel at your feet, has
made even you despise my counsel and advice, then listen, listen well,
and God grant that I may be able to destroy in your heart the poison
that pride has poured into it! You are willing to sacrifice to your
vanity all the happiness, all the quiet and peace, of your future; know,
then, what recompense will be meted out to you. Yesterday Wolsey was in
a manner driven from his palace, and descended the Thames in a common
boat, Cromwell alone accompanying him; for all have deserted him except
his enemies, who, in order to enjoy his calamities, crowded the river in
boats and followed after him. They hoped to see him arrested and carried
to the Tower, the report having been circulated that he would be taken
there. Wolsey--he whom you have so often seen make his appearance in
Parliament, surrounded by an almost royal pomp and splendor--is now a
fugitive, alone, abandoned, without defence, of the clamorous insults
and bitter scorn of a populace always eager to feast their eyes on
the ruins of fallen greatness. The air around him resounded with their
maledictions. ‘Here is the man who fattened on the blood of the poor,’
they cried. ‘The taxes will be reduced now,’ exclaimed others, ‘since
he will have no farther use for palaces and gardens’; and all, in their
ignorance, abused him as the cause of the wrongs and oppressions which
it was probably not in his power to have averted. At length, overwhelmed
with insults and outrages, he was landed at Pultney, and, in order to
escape the mob, was hurriedly conducted to his house at Asher, where he
has been banished. Such is the reward you will receive in the service of
an avaricious prince and a blind infatuated multitude!”
He paused, overcome by anxiety and excitement.
“My dear Fisher,” responded More, deeply moved, “our hearts and thoughts
are always in unison; you have only represented to me a second time the
picture I had already painted myself.”
“Indeed!” cried Rochester; “and do you still hesitate?”
“What!” replied More, resolutely, “and does it require so much hesitation
to sacrifice one’s self? I would not wish to live dishonored; and I
should consider myself guilty if I forgot my duty toward my sovereign and
the honor of England!”
“So you are resolved! Ah! well, let your sacrifice be accomplished,” said
the saintly bishop; “but then may God, whose goodness is infinite, hear
my vows and grant my prayer: may the same dangers unite us; side by side
with you may my last sigh be breathed out with yours; and if the life of
the aged man is not extinguished before that of the man in his prime,
then may the stroke of death cut us down at the same moment!”
“My dear friend,” cried More, “the many years that have passed over your
head and blanched your locks have not yet ripened your judgment, since
you can believe it possible that the king’s anger, although it may one
day fall on me, could ever be permitted to overtake you, the counsellor
of his youth, whom he has so often called his father! No, I can conceive
of no such fearful possibility; the wise, the virtuous Bishop of
Rochester can never be involved in the misfortune that would crush Thomas
More.”
“Ah!” replied Fisher, “but I shall understand how to call down on my head
the vengeance with which he may hesitate to strike me. Believe me, More,
a man scarcely reaches the prime of life before he feels himself, as it
were, daily beginning to fail. Just as in the autumn days the sun’s light
rapidly diminishes, so the passing years despoil his body of physical
strength and beauty; but it has no effect upon his soul. The heart--no,
the heart never grows old! It loves, it suffers, as in the early morning
of life; and when at last it has reached the age when wisdom and
experience have destroyed the illusions of the passions, friendship,
strengthened by so many blessed memories, reigns there alone and entire,
like a magnificent flower that has been sheltered and preserved from the
destroying worm.
“Having almost arrived at the end of his career, he often takes a survey
of the road he has passed over. He loves to recall his joys and his
sorrows, and to weep again for the friends he has lost. I know that
presumptuous youth imagines that the prudence he refuses to obey is the
only good that remains after the labors of life have been terminated by
time.
“Your feelings are not in unison with those of an old man. It is because
you do not understand them. He lives in memory, and you in hope. You
pursue a phantom, a chimera, the nothingness of which he has already
experienced; you accuse him, he complains of you, and often you do not
deign to regard the last bitter tear that is drawn from him at the sight
of the tomb into which he must soon descend.”
“Oh!” exclaimed More, “you whom I venerate as a father and love as a
friend--can you doubt for one moment the truth of a heart entirely
devoted to you? Confirmed by your example, guided and sustained by
your counsels, what have I to fear? Banish from your mind these sad
presentiments. Why should this dread of the future, that perhaps after
all is only chimerical, destroy the extreme happiness I enjoy in seeing
you?”
For a long time they continued to converse, until the light of early
morning at length succeeded the uncertain glimmer of the candle, now
flickering in its socket.
“My friend, I must leave you,” said Rochester. “The day already dawns.
God grant the sun may not this morning arise on the beginning of your
misfortunes!”
“Oh! no,” replied More, “this is my _fête_ to-day. S. Thomas will pray
for and protect us.”
The good bishop then descended to the courtyard and mounted his mule; but
More, unwilling to give him up, walked on by his side as far as the road
followed the course of the river. When they reached the cross-road where
the bishop turned off, More shook his hand and bade him farewell.
A great wooden cross stood near the roadside, on which was suspended a
wreath of withered leaves; and More, seating himself on one of the stone
steps upon which the cross was elevated, followed the good bishop with
his eyes until he had disappeared in the distance.
He then rested his head sadly on his hands, and recalled to mind all this
venerable friend had said to him.
“He is right!” he mentally exclaimed. “How clear-sighted his friendship
renders him! Into what a sea of agitation, malignity, and hatred I shall
be plunged! And all for what? In order that I may be lord chancellor
of the kingdom through which this road passes. Behold, then, beside
the highway,” he added, looking around him, “my lord the great high
chancellor, shivering in the cold morning air just as any other man would
do who had gone out at this hour without putting on his cloak!… Yes, I
can understand how social distinctions might cause us to scorn other
men, if they exempted us from the inconveniences of life. We might then
perhaps believe that we had different natures. But let us change our
garments, and we fall at once, and are immediately confounded with the
common herd.”
While making these sad reflections upon the follies of human nature, More
arose and returned to the house, where his wife and children and his aged
father--simple and peaceable old man, happy in the favor of the king and
the virtues of his son--were all wrapped in profound slumber.
In a spacious apartment, of which the dark and worm-eaten ceiling,
ragged tapestry, and dilapidated windows presented the appearance of a
desolate and abandoned edifice, a fragment of broken furniture still
remained, upon which was placed a small piece of bread. Numberless crumbs
strewed the dusty floor and were eagerly devoured by a little mouse, but
recently the only inhabitant of the place. To-day, however, he had the
company of a man whose extraordinary mind had conceived vast projects and
executed great and useful enterprises--the Archbishop of York, Cardinal
Wolsey. Seated upon the edge of a wooden stool which he had placed in the
embrasure of a window, he held his hands crossed one upon the other, and
bitterly reflected upon his unhappy destiny. Regrets, of which he felt
all the impotency, pressed upon his agitated soul. It seemed to him that
he still heard the cries and menaces of the furious populace that exulted
in his distress, and to which perhaps, alas! he would again be subjected.
At one time filled with courage and resolution, at another humble and
cast down, the anxieties of his mind seemed wholly without measure. His
eyes, wearied with straying listlessly over the plain which extended
before him, beheld only a single laborer ploughing the field. “Man is
small,” said he, “in presence of immensity; the point which he forms
in space is imperceptible. Entire generations have passed away, have
gathered the fruits of the earth, and now sleep in their native dust.
My name has been unknown to them. Millions of creatures suffer, where
I exist free from pain. Coming up from the lowest ranks of society, I
have endeavored to elevate myself above them. And what has my existence
signified to them? Has not each one considered himself the common centre
around which all the others must revolve?”
Here Wolsey, impelled by extreme hunger, approached the little worm-eaten
table, and took up the morsel of dry bread left from his repast the
evening before.
Just as he was raising it to his mouth a man entered, dressed in the most
scrupulous manner, and enveloped in an ample cloak of the finest material.
Wolsey was startled, and gazed at him in astonishment.
“What! Arundel,” he exclaimed at last, “what could have brought you to
this place?”
“Yourself,” replied Arundel, in a frank, abrupt manner. “You have lost
everything, and have never informed me by a word! Do you think, then, I
have forgotten all you have done for me?”
“The favors I have conferred on you were so slight,” replied Wolsey,
“that it would have been natural you should have no longer remembered
them, especially since many who owe their wealth, and perhaps their
lives, to me have so completely forgotten it.”
“I have never learned how to flatter nor to wear velvet gloves,” replied
Arundel; “but I am still more ignorant of the art of forgetting past
favors. No, it has never been my custom to act thus; and you have
offended me more than you imagine by proving you believed me capable of
such baseness.”
As he said this, Arundel took from his bosom an immense purse of red
satin, filled with gold, and laid it on the dilapidated table beside a
package of clothing which he had thoughtfully added to his gift.
“There are no acknowledgments to be made,” he remarked; “it is essential
first of all that you be made comfortable. You can return this when it
suits your convenience. Now let us say no more about it.”
“Alas!” cried Wolsey, “are you not aware, then, that I may never be able
to return it? They will divide my ecclesiastical benefices among them.
The Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Wiltshire have already been put in
possession of the revenue from my bishopric of Winchester. This is the
only food I have had since I came here,” he added, showing him the bread
he still held in his hand.
“Indeed! It is not very delicate,” replied Arundel; “but it is your own
fault. When one has friends, he should not neglect them, and that is just
what you have done.”
“Misfortune often renders us unjust,” answered the cardinal, deeply
moved by the generous frankness and brusque proceedings of Arundel, whom
he had always, until now, regarded as being haughty and ungrateful,
because he had never observed him among his crowd of fawning courtiers.
“I must confess that I could not endure the thought of being repulsed
by those for whom I have done everything. I do not believe that among
the immense number of those who daily wearied me with protestations of
their ostentatious regard there is to-day one who has condescended to
think of me in my misfortunes. You only have thought to succor me in my
distress--you, who, without my being aware of it, have doubtless been all
the while the most sincere among them all.”
“I cannot believe,” replied Arundel, without appearing to notice the
acknowledgments with which Wolsey continued to overwhelm him, “that they
would all thus have abandoned you had they known the extreme severity
with which you have been treated; it would be too foul a blot upon the
name of humanity. Notwithstanding they laugh at our misfortunes, I think
it appears worse to us than it really is. No, be assured you will find
some faithful friends who will defend you. For instance, Sir Thomas More,
your successor, whose fortune you have made, cannot fail to use his
influence in your favor.”
“More owes me nothing,” replied the cardinal. “I have not made his
fortune; when I proposed him to the king as Treasurer of the Exchequer,
he had for a long time been acquainted with his rare merits. Knowing that
the appointment would prove both useful and agreeable to the king, I
recommended him to make it; but really it was more for the king’s benefit
than More’s. Besides, I am aware that More is one of the most zealous
partisans of Catherine. Thus, you see, there exists no reason why he
should feel inclined to assist me. I am only surprised that a man of his
exalted integrity should accept a position where he will necessarily be
compelled to act in opposition to his convictions.”
“It is with the eager desire of ultimately being able to convert all
the world and to correct all consciences,” replied Arundel with a smile
of derision; for he never lost an occasion of ridiculing the importance
which many attach to political intrigues, and, as they say, to the
public good, in whose management they pretend to take a hand, in order
to win admiration at any cost for their talents. “And verily, he will
find it difficult to sustain his position, unless he becomes the very
humble servant of my Lady Anne, regent of the kingdom; for nothing is
done but what she ordains, and her uncle, whom she has appointed chief
of the council, executes the orders which the king claims the honor
of communicating to him. Oh!” continued Arundel in the same ironical
tone, and without perceiving the painful effect his words produced on
the unhappy cardinal, “truly it is a very great advantage, and above
all highly honorable for England, to see her king put in tutelage to
the caprices of a woman as weak and vain as she is arrogant. If he was
absolutely determined to go into leading-strings, why did he not beseech
the good Queen Catherine to take charge of him? She, at least, would
have been careful to hold the reins equally on both sides, so that the
swaddling could have been made to walk straight.”
“A swaddling,” repeated Wolsey, “… who devoured his nurse!”
“Hold, my dear lord,” continued Arundel; “it cannot be denied that
you have made a great mistake in encouraging the king in his divorce
project--yes, a great mistake, which they now begin to discover. But I do
wrong, perhaps, to reproach you, since you are the first to be punished
for your manner of seeing things. But listen to me; as for myself, if, in
order to avoid dying of starvation, or being compelled to subsist on just
such bread as you have there, I had been obliged to accept the place of
lord chancellor, on the day when I found myself relieved of so burdensome
and exacting an office I should have cried aloud: ‘Thank heaven that I am
again seated by my own fireside, where in peace and quiet I can get up
at my leisure and contemplate passing events.’ For myself, these are my
principles: to have nothing to do is the first essential to happiness;
nothing to lose, the second; nothing to disturb or annoy, the third;
and upon these rest all the others. Such is my system--the best of all
systems, the only.…”
Arundel would have still continued explaining the numerous theories he
had originated for securing happiness for an indefinite length of time,
perhaps, but he suddenly perceived that Wolsey no longer heard him, but,
with his head sunk on his breast, seemed absorbed in thought.
“Well, my lord,” said Arundel, “you are not listening to me, it seems?
Really, it is not worth while to explain to you the true method of being
happy.”
“Ah! my dear Arundel,” replied Wolsey, aroused by the exclamation of his
visitor, “how could you expect me to think of profiting by your lessons,
or to make an application of your theories of happiness, when at this
very moment, perhaps, I have been condemned to death by Parliament?”
“There is no proof of that,” replied Arundel. “Sufficient unto the day
is the evil--gloomy apprehensions profit us nothing; they do not delay
the progress of events; on the contrary, they send them on us in advance,
and only serve to aggravate the consequences. Moreover, I must not forget
to suggest that if it would be more agreeable for you to be with your
friends, there are many who will be happy to receive you, and offer you
a mansion as commodious, although less sumptuously furnished, than your
palace of York or that of Hampton Court, the latter of which I have never
liked since you added the gallery.”
“What is that gallery to me now? I surrender it up to you,” said the
cardinal.
The endless arguments of Arundel began to weary him exceedingly. In spite
of the extreme gratitude he felt for his sincere and generous offers,
Wolsey could not divest himself of the conviction that Arundel belonged
to that class who, while in other respects full of good impulses and
laudable intentions, are so entirely wanting in tact and delicacy, and
contend so urgently for their own opinions, that the consolations they
would force you to adopt, far from alleviating your sufferings, only
augment them and render their sympathy irksome and oppressive. This
feeling was experienced by Wolsey, uncertain as he was what fate was
reserved for him, trembling even for his life, while Arundel endeavored
to paint for him a minute picture of the happiness and tranquillity
enjoyed by a man living in peace and quiet, with nothing to disturb him
in the enjoyment of his possessions.
“Alas!” he exclaimed at length impatiently, “why has not kind Providence
blessed me with a nature like yours? I should be less unhappy, nor every
instant see yawning before me the terrible depths of the precipice on
which I now stand. I could catch, at least, at the branches of absurdity,
until the moment when I should be dashed to pieces! But no, I cannot;
I am too well acquainted with men and things to expect the slightest
assistance. They are always ready to strike those who are falling,
but never attempt to raise them up. Yesterday, only yesterday, the
commissioners of Parliament demanded of me the letters-patent I had
received from the king in order to exercise my authority as legate,
although every one knew that, as he had given them to me, it was his
right alone to take them away again. Ah! well, they have persisted in
their demand, and have refused to believe me on oath! No, I will indulge
in no more illusions; my enemies have sworn my death, and they will
obtain it! And the king, the king my master, after fifteen years of the
most faithful service, he delivers me up, helpless and defenceless, to
all the cruelties their hatred may inspire; and yet you, Arundel, think
that I should still indulge in hope?”
“But all this will be arranged, I tell you,” replied Arundel with an
imperturbable coolness. “You should not trouble yourself in advance,
because, if the worst _should_ happen, it will change nothing; and if it
does _not_, your present suffering will have been needless.”
As Arundel finished this wise reasoning, Cromwell appeared.
He came from London, where he had been, he said, to defend Wolsey before
the Parliament.
On seeing him enter the cardinal was seized with an uncontrollable alarm,
thinking his fate had been decided.
“Cromwell!” he cried, and could say no more.
“Ah!” replied Cromwell, “you should not thus give way to your
apprehensions, although.…” He paused on seeing the cardinal grow deadly
pale. “You need have no uneasiness, because the king has sent Norris to
bid me assure you he would take you under his protection.”
“I have been condemned, then!” cried the unhappy Wolsey. “Speak,
Cromwell, speak; conceal nothing from me. I am not a child,” he added
with firmness.
“You have been condemned by the Star Chamber, but the king says he will
have the bill rejected in the House of Commons,” replied Cromwell.
“He will not do it!” cried Wolsey, the tears coursing rapidly down his
cheeks. “He will sacrifice me, Cromwell, I know it; he has no longer any
use for me, and my past services have left no impression on his mind. But
how far has their rage carried them? To what have they condemned me?”
“You have been placed beyond the protection of the king, and all your
property confiscated.”
“The king’s protection is already recovered,” gently interrupted Arundel,
who had listened until this time in silence. “As for the confiscation,
that will be more difficult, inasmuch as they are generally more ready
to take than to give. However, my dear cardinal, you should despair of
nothing; then let us try and console you. They cannot confiscate me, who
have never had anything to do with the gentlemen of the council. I have a
good house, an excellent cook; you will come home with me, and, my word
for it, you shall want for nothing.”
“Arundel,” interrupted the cardinal, “I am deeply grateful for your kind
offer; but believe me, they will not leave me the choice of profiting by
it.”
“Why not? why not?” exclaimed Arundel. “The devil! Why, these gentlemen
of the council are not wild beasts! A little avaricious, a little
ambitious, a little envious, and slightly selfish, but they are at least
as accommodating as the devil!”
“No!” replied Wolsey.
“I assure you, before receiving the king’s message,” said Cromwell, “I
was in despair, for they spoke of having you arrested and immediately
urging the accusation of high treason; but since the king has declared
you under his protection, I do not believe that all is entirely lost.
Norris has repeated to me twenty times: ‘Say positively to the cardinal
that the king advises him not to be troubled, and to remember that he can
give him, any moment he pleases, far more than they can take away.’”
“I hope I may be mistaken, dear Cromwell,” replied the cardinal with
a sombre air; “but I fear a momentary compassion only has excited the
king to say what you tell me, and it will not be long before that wicked
night-bird[140] will again have possession of his ear. She will not
fail to use her influence in defaming me and blackening anew all my
actions, until the king will cease to oppose the wicked designs they have
conceived against me.”
Saying this, he buried his face in his hands and sank into a state of
despondency impossible to describe.
Cromwell made no reply, and Arundel silently took his leave, inwardly
congratulating himself, as he returned home, upon the tranquil and happy
life he knew so well how to lead, and censuring those who would not
imitate his example; without once reflecting that few were in a position
so agreeable or independent as his, and consequently were not able to
enjoy themselves equally nor after his own deliberate fashion.
TO BE CONTINUED.
SINE LABE CONCEPTA
Predestined second Eve. For this conceiv’d
Immaculate--not lower than the first.
Chosen beginner in the loss reversed,
And mediatress in the gain achieved,
When, the new angel, as the old, believed,
Thy hearkening should bless whom Eve’s had curst.
And therefore we, whose bondage thou hast burst,
Grateful for our inheritance retrieved,
Must deem this jewel in thy diadem
The brightest--hailing thee alone “all fair,”
Nor ever soil’d with the original stain:
Alone, save Him whose heart-blood bought the gem
With peerless grace preventive none might share--
Redemption’s perfect end, all else tho’ vain.
VILLAGE LIFE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.
“I think I shall start for New Hampshire to-morrow,” I said. “Do you know
anything about L----, in Cheshire County?”
Jones, who had been meditatively examining the coloring of a
richly-tinted meerschaum, sat up erect at this question, with a sudden
access of vigor.
“L----?” he said. “By George! there’s where Agnes Cortland lives now in
the summer.”
It was the middle week of July. Aspirations for one whiff of the breeze
among the hills had become irresistible. We were sitting together, Jones
and I, in my room up-town after luncheon. Jones was a young New York
artist in his first season after his return from Italy the previous
autumn. He, too, was about to start on a sketching tour through Vermont,
in which State his people lived. He was late leaving town, but money
was not easy with him--a handsome young fellow of that golden age
between twenty-three and twenty-four, when one is apt to think he needs
only a very short-handled lever to move the world. He was of medium
height, but squarely and powerfully built; with a face good-natured,
but very resolute, in expression. A stranger would not be likely to
take a liberty with him. I had a strong notion that Jones would make a
better soldier than artist, if there were any question of blows being
struck for the country, which happily there is not. But hitherto I had
shrewdly kept that opinion to myself. Considerably older than he was,
and engaged in another occupation, circumstances had thrown us a good
deal together. Intimacy had brought confidence, and confidence, at
his age, meant--nothing more nor less than it always does under such
circumstances--the unbosoming of his love affairs. How few there are
who have not found themselves in the same position, either as actors or
sympathetic chorus, or in time as both! What countless dramas of passion
are continually being put upon the private stage before this limited
audience!
Now, it is not the purpose of this paper to pursue the history of
Jones’ captivity at the hands of the tender goddess through all the
infinitesimal and transcendental chapters a first romance runs into. More
placid emotions and observations, befitting the serenity of approaching
middle age, are in store for the reader. And in fact the history of
Jones’ passion is still incomplete. But so much of it may be given as
fell within the purview of our New Hampshire observations.
Jones was poor--prosaic fact, which robs life of so many compensations as
we grow old. But at twenty-three we spurn the mastery of the glittering
dross--that is, if Congress gives us any to spurn! Let us say rather
of the flimsy paper. At that age of our flowing life we coin money at
our own mint; or, more truly, draw limitless drafts on the Bank of
the Future. Happy the man who meets them when they fall due! Jones,
at least, had no doubts as to his future solvency. But his plans were
vague--very!
Agnes Cortland was the daughter of a railroad director--or two or
three directors rolled into one--and had the world, or at least the
New York world, to choose from. Poor Jones! his story might almost be
predicted from the start. Yet this inheritor of the (latent) genius
of any half-dozen masters, ancient or modern, you choose to name,
believed, perhaps with some reason, that this daughter of Dives liked
him; and as for himself, he vowed with hyperbole that he adored her.
They had frequently met--their families then being neighbors in the
country--before he went to Italy, where he had spent two years studying
and wandering about. No avowal of affection had been made between them,
but he had gone away with the consciousness many little signs and tokens
give that he was not disliked. Since his return a year ago some meetings
had taken place--at rarer intervals--in society. At an evening party
some months before she had given him, he said, a slight but unmistakable
opportunity of declaring himself, if he had wished to do so.
“But I did not take it,” said Jones, who, spite of his being in love, was
as manly a young fellow as one could meet. “She knows I am poor; and I
don’t want to be thought a fortune-hunter.”
I laughed at this quixotic declaration.
“My dear fellow,” I said, “you fly at high game. But I should not let
the _auri sacra fames_ interfere, one way or the other, with my tender
emotions. If I did so at all, Plutus would have his due weight in the
scale, believe me!”
“What would you do?” said Jones. This was in one of those “tobacco
parliaments” in early spring--if so they might be called, where one,
only, smoked, and the other looked on with sympathy; for I had abandoned
the “weed” some years before--hardly of such profundity, nor yet so
silent, as those Mr. Carlyle speaks of. Jones had recurred to his usual
topic of hopes and perplexities.
“Do?” I answered, looking at him retrospectively, as it were, as if
contemplating my own departed youth, as he sat there in his favorite
attitude after dinner, gracefully balancing one leg over the arm of
my chintz-covered easy-chair, while I was stretched out on the sofa.
“Ah! that is an easy question to propound, but not so easy to answer.
At your age I should not think you would need much prompting. But if
you ask me, I would say, leave it alone! Love is a luxury for the rich
or the evenly-mated poor. But you are not likely to take that advice.
A good deal would depend on the reinforcements she might bring to the
struggle. A woman is not always a passive instrument in those affairs,
but sometimes has a will of her own. I have never seen your fair one,
and know nothing about her. But if she be a girl of some strength of
character, and her love do not prove a mere school-girl’s fancy, she
might possibly gain her father’s consent. But it is not a promising
adventure, at the best; and I would not recommend you to embark your
hopes in it. Keep clear of serious entanglements until you see your way
before you. Above all, avoid anything like a clandestine engagement. It
will not add to your happiness or hers. I don’t suppose you will think
this a very encouraging opinion. But there may be circumstances in your
favor I know nothing of. Marry her, if you can, and can get the father’s
consent; and go into “railroading” with him in his office. You will make
more money at that than you are ever likely to do sticking little dabs of
color on a piece of canvas.”
I saw Jones wince at this mercenary view of his art. But he bore it
like a man, and continued silent. The suggestion of such a change of
vocation did not appear to surprise him, though it was plain no active
intention of throwing up his art had yet entered his mind. The fact is,
Jones is one of those young men--not inconsiderable in numbers in the
profession--who “have a studio,” but are not likely ever to send many
master-pieces out of it. Developing some precocious talent for drawing
when they are boys, and seizing with boyish eagerness upon the suggestion
of being “an artist,” they are offered by fond but undiscerning parents
upon the altar of art. But they never advance beyond a mechanical
dexterity in putting conventional scenes upon canvas. They haven’t
a spark of that genius that is often observed where other pursuits
have prevented a devotion to the profession. Eventually they abandon
altogether the study or practice of their art, or sink into drudges for
the picture or chromo dealers, or grind out a living as drawing-masters,
or--Heaven knows how. I will not say that Jones was altogether deficient
in talent, but the talent that makes an agreeable accomplishment for
the rich amateur is a different thing from that which will pay the
piper or win eminence in the art. Jones painted his pictures for the
autumn and spring exhibitions, and had one or two on view in one of
the up-town windows. But at Du Vernet’s big sale I know that a clever
little bit of coloring on which he had spent some time was knocked down
to a chromo-dealer for sixteen dollars! How was he going to live on such
prices? And as for marrying Agnes Cortland--it was simply preposterous
to think of it. Nor is this redundancy of young native artists on whom
neither genius nor fashion smiles confined to New York alone. In Boston,
which is the only other city boasting of a native school of art, the same
low prices prevail. It is disheartening; but a more disheartening thing
still is that those prices often represented the actual value of the
picture.
Jones was imperfectly educated, though his continental travel had made
him a fair linguist. He certainly drew very little inspiration from the
antique, for he knew next to nothing about it; nor had he much of that
sympathy with the undercurrent of life, and its relations with nature,
which gives significance to common things. He had a fondness for pleasure
which, of course, did not contribute to his success. Yet he was one of
those young fellows whom it is impossible to meet without liking. He was
frank, honorable, and spirited, and had a robust shrewdness about him in
dealing with men and things that made him a pleasant companion. That he
would eventually choose a more active kind of life--and probably succeed
in it--I was half-convinced, and my advice about “railroading,” though
spoken partly in jest, was inwardly meant in good faith.
On this particular July evening on which our paper opens Jones followed
up the announcement of my proposed trip to L---- by expressing a wish
that he were going there too, so that he might come to a definite
understanding with Agnes Cortland; and the wish was soon followed by the
determination to act on it.
“How long do you intend to stay there?” he asked.
“Till the first week in September,” I said.
“Then I will come back that way, and join you for a few days about the
first of September. The Cortlands don’t leave there till October. We can
come back to New York together.”
It would have been ungracious on my part to have objected to this
proposal, though I had a good many doubts about its wisdom. So it
happened that my little excursion to L----, which I had innocently
designed to be a season of simple lotus-eating such as Mr. Tennyson
ascribes to his Olympian deities, “reclined upon the hills together,
careless of mankind,” was complicated by a subordinate interest in a
comedy from real life which had that quiet village for a stage.
The next day I started, taking Boston _en route_. That staid, quiet,
cleanly city seems always to be, compared with New York, like a good
school-boy by the side of a big, blustering brother fonder of a street
row than his books. Then to Fitchburg, where I stopped over night, as
some stage travelling was to be done from our “jumping-off” place, and
riding over the country roads in the morning was more promising than on
a dark and cloudy night. In the morning the Fitchburg Railroad again,
and one of its branches to L----. The unwonted coolness of the morning
breeze, as the train entered the New Hampshire hills, already began to
refresh mind and body alike. The pines and hemlocks extending back into
deep, dim recesses carpeted with moss and ferns; the cattle moving slowly
over the pastures in the distance; the pastures themselves stretching
up the sides of the highest hills, still of the freshest green, without
a hint of the yellow undertone that I watched gradually overspread them
as the summer ripened into autumn; a lake in the foreground, silent,
unvisited, its clear waters unpolluted by the dregs of commerce or the
drainage of a vast metropolis; even the caw! caw! of the ravens flying
off from the tops of the pine stumps, send a novel and delicious feeling
of freedom through the breast of the city traveller who has put care and
work behind him for a season. Nor is this feeling altogether evanescent.
Even now, as winter approaches and the north winds from the same hills
come sweeping down over the great city, sending us chattering and
freezing to our cosey firesides, the glory of the July foliage moves our
memory like a far-off dream of youth. Yet, after all, it may be doubted
whether the charm of country scenes is not due in great part to their
novelty and the feeling that we are not bound to them longer than we
please. Of all that has been written in praise of country life, how much
is the work of the city resident; how little, comparatively speaking,
springs from the country itself! There drudgery too often takes the
place of sentiment. It is the Epicurean poet, Horace, satiated with the
noise of the Forum and the gossip of the baths, who sings sweetest of
rural contentment, of the “lowing herds,” the “mellow fruits of autumn,”
and the “brooks murmuring over stony beds.” But when he gives play to
his satiric vein, none pictures more truthfully than the Venusian the
grumbling of the husbandman, who “turns the heavy clay with the hard
plough.” Embowered in some shady arbor on the windings of the Digentia
through his Sabine farm, or doing a little amateur farming, to the
amusement, as he confesses, of his blunt country neighbors, who laughed
at the dandy poet with a hoe in his hand, it was easy for Horace to
chant the smooth and sunny side of country life. But the eight laborers
on his estate, chained literally to the soil, as many a New England
farmer morally is by the burden of debt or family, no doubt saw things
differently. And the bailiff of his woodlands we know to have despised
those “desert and inhospitable wilds,” and to have longed for the streets
and shows of Rome. It is amazing upon what inattentive ears the music of
our wild birds falls in a secluded farm-house. Often it seems absolutely
unheard; while the clatter of the long street of the country town that
the farmer visits once a month is for ever in his mind.
But we delay too long at the way station at L----. Let us onwards.
The carrier of the United States mail, who is at the same time the Jehu
of the passenger stage, slings our _impedimenta_ up behind with an energy
to be envied by a veteran “baggage-smasher” at some of our big depots,
straps it down, and jumps upon the box. We mount more slowly beside him,
disdaining to be shut up in the close interior, and intent upon looking
at the country we pass through this lovely morning. The two stout grays
breast the hill leading to L---- Centre, eight miles distant.
The surface of the country is hilly and broken; as we approach L----,
mountainous. Mounting the crest of the first steep hill, a beautiful
natural panorama spreads out before us: long, narrow, intersecting lines
of timber, like giant hedges, dividing the hill farms from each other.
A rolling country spreads toward the east, bounded on the horizon by a
low range of mountains wooded to the summit, and with a white steeple
flashing out here and there among the trees at their base. The effects of
light and shade, caused by the clouds on a brilliant day, on one of those
white steeples, standing out solitarily against the side of a mountain
eight or ten miles distant, are peculiar. Sometimes it becomes invisible,
as the circle of the shadow is projected upon that area of the mountain
which includes it. Then, as the dark veil moves slowly, with a sliding
motion, up the side and over the crest of the mountain, the white spire
flashes out from the obscure background of the forest with a sudden
brilliancy. On this side patches of blue water among the trees in the
hollows revealed the presence of numerous ponds, as the small lakes, and
some of the large ones, are universally called in New England.
To the northwest what seemed to be a level plain from the height over
which we rode, but which was in reality broken and undulating ground,
stretched beneath us for ten or twelve miles to the base of Mt.
Monadnock. The mountain, grand, massive, and still veiled by a thin mist,
rose boldly from the low country at its foot to a height of nearly four
thousand feet.
A ride of an hour and a half brought us to the top of the hill on the
side of which stands L----. A dozen scattered houses flank the broad
village green, and a Congregational meeting-house, with white belfry
tower and green blinds, stands half-way down the incline.
The post-office and country store combined is at the cross-roads as you
drive down the hill, and some ancient elms on the green seem to nod at
the stranger with a friendly air as he enters the village. “Here,” said I
to myself, “is rural quiet and simplicity. Farewell for many slumberous
weeks the busy haunts of men.” L---- is quite out of the beaten track of
summer travel, and had been recommended me by a friend who had spent some
seasons there, on the ground of economy, charming scenery, good fishing,
and repose. Nor did I find any reason to regret having listened to him.
A country tavern offers entertainment to man and beast, and is resorted
to by the drummers and sample men who invade L----, as elsewhere, with
their goods. But I was not forced to be dependent on it, as a letter from
my friend opened to me the hospitable doors of the comfortable farm-house
where he had boarded two years before.
Here let it be said at the outset that whatever the other drawbacks of
village life in New Hampshire, there is among the farming class a natural
courtesy, and, among the women, even an inherited refinement of manner,
especially in their treatment of strangers, which speaks well for the
native stock. Prejudices there are among both men and women--deep-rooted,
as we shall see--and narrow-minded opinions in plenty; but even these
are concealed where to manifest them might give offence. The family
in which I was domiciled consisted of Mr. Allen and his wife, their
married daughter--who, together with her husband, resided with them--an
unmarried daughter, and a pretty little girl, the grandchild. Mr. Allen
kept a country store--for L---- boasted of two--and traded also in cattle
with Canada, making a journey sometimes as far as Montreal in the spring
to buy stock, which he fattened on his pastures through the summer and
autumn, and sold in the early part of the winter. These various ventures,
which were on the whole successful--as the command of a little ready
money enabled him to take his time and buy and sell to advantage--had
made him more “forehanded” than most of his neighbors. He was one of
the selectmen of L----. His dwelling-house, a large, white, well-kept
two-story edifice, with a garden-plot facing the village street, a piazza
on the sunny side, and two beautiful maples dividing the carriage yard
from the road, was one of the handsomest in L----. Mrs. Allen was one of
those energetic housewives whose sound sense and domestic capacity had
evidently contributed not a little to her husband’s present prosperity.
They were a sturdy couple, intelligent, honest, and knowing what was due
to themselves and others; now going down the hill together with mutual
dependence and confidence in each other. I consider them a good example
of the best type of the New Hampshire farming class.
The married daughter did not compare favorably with the mother. One could
not say of her in any sense:
“O matre pulchra filia pulchrior!”
for, as to the question of female beauty, I will not say, as far as my
observations extend, that the New Hampshire, or indeed the New England
women generally, outside the radius of Boston and some of the large
towns, are very generously endowed by nature with that gracious but
dangerous gift. The lines of the face are too strongly marked; they are
sallow, the form angular; or, where the figure is fuller, it is apt to be
as redundant as the old Flemish painters make the women at a village fair.
But this absence of feminine beauty is not universal. I have seen a
young mother with her babe in her lap--a visitor sitting in Mrs. Allen’s
parlor--who made a picture of beautiful maternity as dignified and
simple as Murillo ever painted. As for that more lasting moral beauty
which, where it is feminine, puts on its most delightful and engaging
charm, Mrs. Harley, the married daughter, was too much engaged with
her own little cares and gossip--poor woman!--to think much of so
intangible a possession. Brought up, probably, in habits of more leisure
and pleasure-seeking than her mother, who still took all the household
work upon herself, she was a victim of _ennui_ and of that blight of
too many American homes--only one child to care for. Her health was
delicate and uncertain, and she bade fair to sink eventually into that
class of invalid wives which forms such an unhappily large percentage
of American women. How often have I heard her complain of the dreadful
dulness of the day! “But,” I asked, “what will you do in the winter, if
you find the summer so unbearable?” Her answer was that they generally
enjoyed themselves enough in the summer-time to be able to get through
the winter. I don’t know whether this was a covert thrust at my lack of
entertaining power; but I laughed at the stroke of satire at my expense,
innocent or intended. That long dreary, snow-shrouded New Hampshire
winter--it demanded indeed a stout heart to face it in one of those
isolated villages. Mrs. Harley had given up her music when she married;
the piano stood idle in the best room. She read nothing--unless looking
at the fashion-plates in a ladies’ magazine be considered reading. A
Sunday-school picnic, a day’s shopping in the nearest country town, were
white days in her calendar. Is such a picture of life cheerless? Yet too
many women are forced to endure it elsewhere. Happy they if the abounding
resources of the faith and its literature come to their aid! Mrs. Harley
was a kind woman withal, if her attention were drawn for a moment from
herself; and an affectionate and anxious wife. This and her love for
her child--fretful and over-indulgent as the latter sentiment was apt
to be--were her redeeming qualities. Placed in a large city, with means
equal in proportion to those within her reach in L----, she would have
made a more agreeable woman, and would have been tenfold happier herself.
The influence of semi-solitary life--where a religious vocation does not
exalt and sanctify it--is more unfavorable in its effects upon women than
upon men. The latter commonly have work to do which keeps their faculties
from rusting. Woman’s nature is essentially social.
Mr. Harley assisted his father-in-law in the store--a tall, handsome
young man with a city air, who, at that season, sat in the store the
whole afternoon with perhaps one customer. Such a life for youth, with
its superabundant energies ready to pour like a torrent into any
channel, is stagnation. The highest of man’s natural powers rust and
decay. But natural forces have their sway in the great majority of such
cases, and force an outlet for themselves. The youth of these villages
leave their homes for the great cities, or take Horace Greeley’s advice
and “go West.” Life is hard, and it is monotonous, which adds a new
slavery to hardship. The exodus is constant. L---- has less population
and fewer inhabited houses now than it had forty years ago. The same is
true of other villages--a striking fact in a comparatively new country.
One rambles along some by-road overgrown with grass, and presently comes
upon a deserted and ruined house and barn, the rafters only standing, or
perhaps nothing more than a heap of bricks in the cellar. He asks about
the people, and is told that they have “gone away.” The answer is vague
and uncertain as their fate. I spoke to an old man of eighty-seven,
seated in the shade on the long bench before the country store, where he
could hear the news in the morning. He remembered with distinctness the
events of the war of 1812. He spoke with regret of the flourishing times
of his youth in L---- and its dulness to-day. This roving disposition
of the American youth is the result of immense elbow-room, and has
been providential in building up new States and subduing the virgin
wilderness. The manufacturing cities of New Hampshire also gain yearly at
the expense of the small villages. The township--or town, as it is most
commonly called--embraces three or four of such villages, and is subject
to the same reciprocal movement. Comparatively few new farms have been
broken in during the last twenty or thirty years; and too rarely it
happens on the old farms that fresh ground is taken in from the pasture
for cultivation. The son tills what his father or grandfather cleared.
The first few days in L---- I spent rambling about the pastures--some
of them literally red with the raspberry, which, though it has not the
delicacy or fragrance of the wild strawberry, is not to be disdained
by the city palate--or climbing to the tops of the highest neighboring
hills. What a sense of elastic joy and freedom to me, who had not spent
a summer in the country for three years, to lie stretched at full length
on the top of a new-mown hill, and let the eye wander over the valley
beneath, with its intervening woods and ponds, till it rested upon the
distant mountains, the cloud-shadows chasing each other over their sides
and summits! If this were not in truth an Arcadia to those who lived and
died there, and were buried in the white-stoned churchyard among the
elms--if to them life brought its cares, its jealousies, and sorrows--to
the stranger who sought nothing more than to enjoy its natural beauties
it renewed all the associations of rural happiness and simplicity. Not
that one might hope to see a Corydon and Phillis issue from the New
Hampshire woods--for there is a sternness among those northern scenes,
even in the brightest bloom of summer, foreign to the poetry of the
South--but that in its dark pine groves and on its windy hills fancy
might picture an eclogue or a romance not less sweet and tender because
more real.
L---- is on the height of land between the valleys of the Connecticut and
Merrimac, between twenty and thirty miles distant from each. It is from
one thousand to one thousand three hundred feet above the sea level. It
is said of the rain that falls on the roof of the village church that
part of it eventually runs into the Connecticut, part into the Merrimac,
so evenly does its roof-tree divide the water-shed of those rivers.
But as the same story is told of other churches in the central belt of
Cheshire County, it may be regarded rather in the light of a rhetorical
illustration than as a fact of physical geography. The scenery is not
of the grand or sublime order to be seen further north among the White
Mountains, except where Mt. Monadnock raises its dark and solemn front
above the surrounding landscape; but it is beautiful and picturesque.
Its greatest charm is its variety. In the morning, when the sun was well
towards the zenith--for the fresh air of those hills made the day at
all hours delightful--I would stroll out over the pastures to a hill a
quarter of a mile distant from the farm-house. There would I seat myself,
protected from the sun’s ardent rays, under a young maple bush, the
elastic branches of which, with the sloping ground thick with ferns, made
a natural easy-chair. The valley is below me, the farms stretch along
the nearer hills, and in the further distance the blue-veiled mountains
define the skyline. I bend down a branch of the maple, and before me is
the upper half of Mt. Monadnock, a thin gray mist still enveloping it.
The base of the mountain is hidden by an intervening hill. Leaving this
pasture, and walking a few hundred rods further on, I enter a field where
the hay has just been cut, and which is now as smooth as a croquet lawn,
but not so level; for it is the crest of one of the highest hills. Here a
new scene awaits me. To the north and west the hill has the shape almost
of a perfect dome. Stretched on the top, I cannot see the declivities
of the sides, but only the tops of the trees at some distance. One has
the sensation of being on the roof of a high building with a deep drop
between him and the surrounding country. The view is superb. The whole
mass of Mt. Monadnock, from its base to the highest elevation, rises
from the valley ten miles distant. At its foot is the village of West
Jaffrey, a fashionable watering place. The white spire of the church
is conspicuous among the trees. Further south is Gap Mountain and
Attleborough Mountain; and sweeping round to the east, the view stretches
along the New Ipswich Mountains to Watatick Hill. The circuit extends
about twenty or thirty miles, making a picture of great natural beauty.
The English hay, as the timothy and red clover are generally called, was
still standing in many of the fields, but here and there the whirr of
the mowing-machine could be heard, and the eye, following the direction
of the sound, could discern the mower in his shirt-sleeves driving his
pair of horses in the distant field. The meadow-grass of the lowlands was
still in most places untouched. On the sides of the hills the scattered
fields of wheat, barley, and oats, still green, made darker patches of
verdure on the yellowish ground-color.
But the view I most preferred was from a hill a little to the south of
the village near some deserted buildings. Here the scene was wilder
and more extensive. To the west Mt. Monadnock could be seen through
a gorge between two hills; to the east was a wild and broken country;
while to the south the woods seemed to extend as far as the eye could
reach, and over the furthest range of hills the great dome of Mt.
Wachusett in Massachusetts, nearly thirty miles distant, was plainly
seen, gray and massive, with the naked eye. It was only when one turned
to Mt. Monadnock, ten miles distant, and observed how plainly he could
distinguish the different colors of the mountain--the dark woods, the
brown, bare surfaces, and the slate-colored rocks--that, looking at Mt.
Wachusett, and noting its uniform pale gray outline, he was able to
estimate the real distance of the latter, so comparatively close at hand
did it appear.
Seated at ease on the smooth turf on the summit of this “heaven-kissing”
hill, and looking at this wide and beautiful prospect, one might repeat
to himself Mr. Longfellow’s lines:
“Pleasant it was, when woods were green
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long, drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;”
substituting only for “drooping boughs” the irregular ranges of hills.
But descriptions of natural scenery, if long continued, are wearisome.
Even a Ruskin is read best in snatches. The mind otherwise becomes
clogged with images. Let us return, therefore, to animated life.
As Sunday approached, I made inquiries about the nearest Catholic church.
I found it was at W----, eight or nine miles distant. I had no means
of getting there the first Sunday. I retired to my room and read some
chapters of that sublime and affecting work, the _Imitation of Christ_,
the gift of a good and beloved mother.
A Catholic is still almost a being from another moral world in some
of the isolated New Hampshire villages. Nowhere are the traditions of
Puritanism more zealously or rigidly maintained. These good folk seem
hardly yet to have emerged from a fog of wild amazement that “popish”
priests and their followers should be tolerated by the selectmen. Not
that any overt or offensive change of manner follows the announcement
that one is a Catholic--as I have elsewhere said, there is a natural or
inherited vein of good manners among the people that forbids it--but a
momentary silence reveals to the speaker that he has stated something
strange and unlooked for. There is an unmistakable tone of intolerance
manifest, however, in any allusion to the poorer class of Irish and
French that congregate in the larger towns, and are sometimes found in
the villages in a wooden-ware factory, or cutting wood or hemlock-bark,
or doing an odd job of haymaking. They are looked upon with dislike
and distrust, mixed with a feeling of contempt. Curious it is that the
native-born New Englander, with his mind saturated with hereditary
theories of personal liberty, equality, and fraternity, should yet
evince a more unconquerable aversion to the foreign element, which has
contributed so largely to the greatness of the country, than is shown in
European countries to men of a different race, unless war has temporarily
embittered national feeling. Yet the explanation is not hard to find.
This descendant of the Puritan, chained to the rocky and ungrateful
soil his forefathers won from the Indians and the wilderness, sees with
sullen indignation and jealousy the same rights and privileges which
he enjoys under our free institutions extended so largely to those of
a different nationality and religion. In revenge he draws himself more
jealously into his shell. Nor is this feeling confined to the rich and
refined; it penetrates the mass of the native-born New England population.
To speak of lighter things. Society in L---- is eminently aristocratic.
Better, perhaps, it would be to say that the lines of society are very
strongly marked, and that the aristocratic element is essentially
conservative.
Mrs. Cortland, the wife of the New York capitalist, who resides there
three months in the summer, a stout, refined, tight-gloved, graciously
condescending lady, gives a metropolitan tone to L---- society. Mr.
Cortland, an easy-going, easy-tempered man in private life, but reported
to be hard as flint in business matters, seldom finds time to leave New
York, and his visits to L---- are uncertain. His country house, a large,
handsome mansion with well-kept grounds, croquet-lawn, coach-house, and
stables, is on the highest ground in the village; and Mrs. Cortland
occupies without dispute the highest ground socially. It is an imperial
elevation, after the manner of the saying attributed to Cæsar. A call
on Mrs. Cortland is the event of a week, and a return call from her
is a matter not to be lightly treated. How have I seen this good Mrs.
Allen, my landlady, prepare her best room for the grand occasion, and
Mrs. Harley speculate about it with well-assumed indifference a whole
afternoon. One or two other magnates from Boston, scattered through L----
and adjacent townships, save Mrs. Cortland from complete exhaustion by
contact with the village people during the summer.
Then there is the local aristocracy, consisting of the wife of the
Congregational pastor _ex-officio_, and Mrs. Parsons, the wife of
“Squire” Parsons, who owns a small bucket-factory near L----. These two
ladies maintain a strict alliance, offensive and defensive, with Mrs.
Cortland during the summer. Then come the middle classes, comprising Mrs.
Allen and Mrs. Harley, the young doctor’s wife--a stranger and somewhat
snubbed by the autochthonous _élite_--and the well-to-do farmers’ wives.
Finally, we have the _profanum vulgus_, the tail of L---- society, or,
to speak more correctly, those whom society does not recognize--some
farmers’ wives whose husbands were too much in debt to allow them to keep
up appearances; one or two hapless women who sold milk in a wagon to
the neighboring towns, and drove the wagon themselves; and the village
washerwoman, who went around doing “chores.” I think I have exhausted the
classification of the social strata of L----. I observed that the men
eschewed as much as possible the aristocratic distinctions made by their
wives, and were apt to resent by silence or the assumption of an unwonted
bluntness the empty airs and loud voice with which some vulgar rich man
from a neighboring large town would sometimes stride through the village.
Wanderers and waifs, destined apparently to be at some time drawn into
the great caldron of city life--perhaps to their own destruction--were
not wanting in L----. I have said that the women were not remarkable
for beauty. But there was one exception. A girl belonging to one of
the most destitute families in the village, by one of those whims of
nature which are not uncommon, was gifted with a face and figure to
attract even an unobservant eye, and which seemed out of place in that
quiet and homely neighborhood. The mother, a poor, struggling woman with
a growing-up family of all ages, managed to live somehow by the days’
work and occasional assistance given her by the well-to-do families.
The father was living, but spent most of his time in the county jail
for drunkenness. The daughter of whom I speak was about nineteen or
twenty years of age; tall, of fair complexion, with a naturally elegant
carriage and a proud and almost defiant air, as if she resented the
caprice of fortune which had placed her in that lowly station. She had
the art of dressing well with limited means, which some women possess
to the envy of others. On Sundays and at picnics she outshone the more
expensively-dressed daughters of the farmers. She had been, and perhaps
still is, the maid at the village inn. It may be imagined that gossip was
not idle about this poor girl, thus singularly placed and dangerously
gifted. Dreadful quarrels had taken place between the father and mother
about the girl’s staying at the hotel; the drunken father, with a true
sense of what was becoming, insisting that she should leave, the mother
as strenuously maintaining that she should remain. The beauty of the
girl herself was not of that domestic type I have elsewhere noticed
in the mother and her babe I saw in Mrs. Allen’s parlor, but of that
showy, restless, naturally haughty stamp which presaged storm, perhaps
disaster. It is this class misfortune follows and the great cities sweep
into their net. Poverty often makes vice of that which, under happier
fortunes, might have been attractive virtue. _Absit omen_. May this
rustic beauty find a happier, if more homely, destiny as the wife of some
honest farmer in L----!
The summer passed, week after week. I fished, I walked, I rode, I read,
I loitered. The barley ripened on the hill behind the farm-house, and
a golden tint began to spread over the distant fields. The apples grew
large and ruddy on one side where the sun struck the laden branch in
the orchard. The tassels of the corn showed purple. August blazed. The
doves flew thirstily to the large blue pump, and perched on the edges
of the horse-trough after the farmer watered his horse at mid-day. The
bees hummed three at a time in the big yellow cups of the squash-vines.
Have you ever observed of that homely vegetable how ingeniously and
dexterously it fastens its daring and aggressive vines to the ground as
it shoots out over the close-cut grass? Stoop down among the after-math,
or rowen, as it is called in New Hampshire, and you will see that at the
inosculation of each successive joint of the vine, where it throws out
its tendrils and blossoms, it also thrusts forth slender, white, curling
ligaments that twist, each of them, tightly around a tiny tuft of the
short grass. Thus it moors itself, as if by so many delicate living
cables, to the bosom of the life-giving earth.
I might, if space allowed, tell of my fishing ventures, and how one
glorious morning we rode out of L---- in a big yellow wagon with
three horses--a party of seven of us, ladies and gentlemen, from the
village--to make the ascent of Mt. Monadnock. This is the lion of all the
country round. Parties are made up every week to climb its rugged summit.
Over the hills and rolling ground we gaily rattled. Through the sandy
country roads, where the branches of the trees met overhead and made dim
aisles of verdure, we smoothly sped. And then what panting, laughing,
climbing, shrill screaming, as we toiled up the winding path from the
half-way house to the top of the mountain! What a magnificent, boundless
view repaid us! The day was clear. To the north, Mt. Kearsarge and
rolling ranges of mountains; to the southeast, a diversified surface of
country spreading onwards far as the eye could reach towards the unseen
ocean; to the south, Mt. Wachusett; below us woods, valleys, and lakes. A
feeling of awe creeps over one in these mountain solitudes.
As to the fishing, I will confess that to me, who had thrown a fly over
more than one Canadian river, and had killed my twenty-pound salmon
on the Nipisiquit, loafing with a pole in a boat over a lily-covered
pond for a half-pound pickerel was not tremendously exciting sport. But
what mattered it? The mornings were soft and wooing; the woods were
full of mysterious shadows; the water was limpid as if Diana and her
nymphs bathed there in the spectral moonlight. Life passed smoothly and
agreeably. I sought no more.
The blackberries began to ripen, first one by one and then in sable
clusters, in the pastures. The days were growing shorter. The twilight
sank more quickly into night. September approached, and I began to
look for the appearance of my friend Jones. I had seen Miss Cortland
two or three times coming from or going to the meeting-house on Sunday
mornings, when all the beauty and fashion of L---- for miles around rode
up in buggies, carryalls, or open wagons; but I had never met her to be
introduced to her--a little imperial beauty, with a fresh and rosy color,
and a mouth shaped like Cupid’s bow, that needed only to smile to conquer.
On a bright September morning, when the surrounding atmosphere was clear
as a bell, but a thin haze still clung about Mt. Monadnock and the
far-off mountains, Jones rode over on the stage-coach from the railroad
station and joined me at L----. He asked eagerly about Miss Cortland.
Was she in the village?
Yes.
Had I met her?
No; but I had seen her two or three times.
What did I think of her?
Well, I thought her pretty enough to excuse a little wildness of
imagination on his part. He would be a lucky fellow if he got her and
some of her father’s money or a position in his business!
Did I think he would give up his Art so easily?
“My dear Jones,” I replied, “I don’t want to appear cold-blooded,
or to dash your enthusiasm for your art in the least; but, to speak
candidly, I should not be surprised if you did some day under sufficient
temptation--the prospect of marrying Miss Cortland, for example.”
Jones declared his intention of calling on Miss Cortland that very day.
He had a sketch-book full of studies, spirited, but many of them mere
hints. He came back before dinner, full of life, and proposing a score
of schemes for to-morrow. He made a sort of small whirlwind in my quiet
life. Mrs. Cortland had received him civilly, but he thought a little
coolly. But he had seen Agnes, and had spoken a few words to her that
might mean much or little as they were taken, and he was happy--rather
boisterously happy, perhaps, as a young fellow will be at such
times--full of jokes, and refusing to see a cloud on his horizon.
Jones fell easily into our farm-house ways, though he was apt to steal
off in the mornings to play croquet on the Cortlands’ lawn with Miss
Cortland and Miss Parsons, and any other friend they could get to join
them.
One afternoon, when the sun was getting low and a southerly wind blowing,
we started to try for some fish at a pond about half an hour’s walk from
the house. As we turned off the highway into a by-road covered with grass
that led to the pond, I saw Miss Cortland standing on the rising ground
some distance before us. She was looking from us towards the sinking sun,
now veiled in quick-drifting clouds. Her dog, a large, powerful animal, a
cross between a Newfoundland and Mount St. Bernard, was crouched at her
feet. Some vague thoughts about Una and her lion flitted through my mind.
But I was more struck by the way the light touched her figure, standing
out motionless against the gray sky. It reminded me very much of the
general effect of a painting by a foreign artist--Kammerer, I think it
was--that I saw at the exhibition of the Boston Art Club last year. It
was the picture of a girl standing on a pier on the French coast, looking
out to sea. Her golden hair was slightly stirred by the breeze, her lips
a little parted, and there was a far-away look in her eyes, as if she may
have expected a lover to be coming over the sea in one of the yachts that
lined the horizon. The dress of the girl and the stone-work of the pier
were both white. It was a good example of the striking effects produced
by the free use of a great deal of almost staring white, which is a
favorite device of the latest school of French art.
As we advanced, the dog growled and rose, but, recognizing Jones, wagged
his tail inoffensively as we drew nearer. Miss Cortland turned towards us.
“Shall I introduce you?” said Jones.
“No,” I said. “I’ll go on to the pond. I’ll see you to-night.”
Jones advanced, hat in hand. “What happy fortune,” he said, addressing
her, “has led me to meet the goddess of these woods?” Then, altering his
tone, he added in a bantering way: “I see you have been poaching on our
preserves, Miss Cortland. But I do wonder at your taste, fishing for
eels!” pointing to a small basket on her arm from which hung some of the
long stems of the pond-lily. This he said to vex her, knowing her horror
of those creatures. “Eels?” she exclaimed indignantly, with a tone and
gesture of aversion at the thought. “They are pond-lilies.”
“Oh! that is very well to say,” replied Jones, “when you have the lid of
the basket down to hide them; but I insist upon their being eels unless
you show them to me.”
By this time I was out of hearing. I left them together, and kept on down
the road to the pond.
That night Jones came into my room with a quieter manner than usual. He
was evidently very happy, but his happiness had a sobering effect upon
him. He told me that he had made a plain avowal of his feelings to Agnes
Cortland as they walked home together, and that he had won from her the
confession that she loved him and had not been indifferent to him before
he left for Europe. I wished him joy of his good-fortune, though I could
foresee plainly enough that his difficulties had only begun. For a little
time these two innocent young souls--for Jones I knew to be singularly
unsullied by the world for a man of his age--would enjoy their paradise
undisturbed together. Then would come maternal explanations, and the
father’s authority would be invoked. A solemn promise would be exacted
from her to see him no more. Miss Cortland was much attached to her
parents, who would be sincerely anxious for her welfare. She would not
make much resistance. Some day there would come a storm of tears, and
poor Jones’s letters and the ring he gave her would be returned to him
by a faithful messenger, and a little note, blotted with tears, asking
him to forgive her and praying for his happiness. This must be the end.
A year or two of separation and a summer and winter in Europe with her
parents would leave nothing more than a little sad memory of her brief
New Hampshire romance; and in five years she would be married to some
foreigner of distinction or successful man of business, and would be a
happy wife and mother. As for poor Jones, he would probably be heard of
at rare intervals for a year or two as a trader on the Pacific coast
or prospecting a claim in Nevada. But men like him, vigorous, powerful,
well equipped in body and temper for the struggle with the world, are not
kept down long by such disappointments. The storm is fierce, and leaves
its scars after it; but the man rises above it, and is more closely knit
thereafter. Jones will make his mark in the world of business, if not of
art.
No unwelcome prophecies of mine, however, disturbed his happiness for
those few days. I let events take their course. Why should I interrupt
his dream by Cassandra-like anticipations of woe, which would have been
resented as a reflection upon the constancy of his idol? I know that
they met frequently for the following three or four days. Then came the
packing up for departure. My long holiday was over.
On a foggy morning in September we steamed up the Sound on a Fall
River boat. Through Hell Gate the stately boat sped on her way, past
Blackwell’s Island, and across the bows of the Brooklyn ferry-boats,
crowded with passengers for the city in the early morning. Around the
Battery we swept, into the North River, and slowly swung alongside of
Pier 28. Then the hackmen yelled at us; our coach stuck at the corner of
the street; a jam followed; the drivers swore; the policemen shouted and
threatened; the small boys grinned and dodged between the horses; and a
ward politician, with a ruby nose, looked on complacently from the steps
of a corner “sample” room. In one word, we were in New York, and our
village life in Hampshire was a thing of the past.
THE PALATINE PRELATES OF ROME.
Whatever is connected with our Holy Father must have an interest for
Catholics; and at the present time especially it would seem desirable to
know something about the origin and functions of those faithful prelates
of whom this article treats, and with some of whom American visitors to
Rome may be likely to have relations. They are called palatine prelates
because lodged in the same palace as the sovereign, and in these days of
trouble are the nearest to his most sacred Majesty in his solitude and
sufferings. They are four in number, and belong to the pope’s intimate
court and confidence, their names being registered in the Roman _Notizie_
immediately after those of the palatine cardinals among the members of
the pontifical family.
MAGGIORDOMO.
The majordomo, called in good Latin, the official language of the church,
_Magister Domus Papæ_, is the first of these prelates and one of the
highest dignitaries of the Holy See. The chief of the royal palace
has had in all countries immense influence and power; and in France
and Scotland, at least, the _Maires du palais_ and stewards succeeded
in mounting the throne. This officer, who, like the other three, is
always a clergyman, is the high steward of his Holiness and master of
his household, remaining day and night conveniently near to the Pope’s
person, of which he has the special care, and for the safety of which he
is responsible to the Sacred College. Until the present reign he was
supreme under the sovereign, in the civil, military, and ecclesiastical
affairs of the court, having his own tribunal of civil and criminal
jurisdiction.[141] Some years ago, however, a part of the prerogatives
of this office was transferred to the Cardinal Secretary of State; but
even now the majordomo is at the head of the administration of the palace
in which the Pope may reside for the time being, and on a vacancy of the
see is _ex-officio_, by a decree of Clement XII. in 1732, governor of
the conclave.[142] In this latter capacity, by a natural order of things
which cannot be long delayed (yet God grant it may!), he will have to
act a part during one of the most critical periods in the history of
Christian Rome. He has the privilege[143] for life of using the pope’s
arms with his own, and consequently retains this heraldic distinction
even after he has been promoted to the cardinalate to which his office
surely leads, sooner or later, according to a court custom that began
in the middle of the XVIIth century.[144] The origin of this office is
involved in some doubt, owing to its antiquity. It must have been that,
in the palace given to Pope Melchiades by the Emperor Constantine, some
person conspicuous for piety and prudence was appointed to keep the
members of a large and constantly-increasing court in mutual harmony and
subjection to authority, while relieving the pontiff of the immediate
superintendence of his household, and leaving him free to give his
precious time to public and more important matters. At all events, at
a very early period after this there is mentioned among the officers
attached to the _Patriarchium Lateranense_--as the old _Ædes Lateranæ_
were then called--a _Vice-dominus_, who was chosen from the Roman clergy,
and was often, as the more modern prelates have been, invested with the
episcopal dignity. He was answerable for the good order and harmonious
administration of the palace; and the extent of that portion of it
in which he dwelt and had his offices, as well as held his court of
jurisdiction over the papal domestics,[145] must have been large, since
it was called the _vicedominium_; and although his successor fifteen
hundred years later has not the same ample powers that he enjoyed, he is
still a personage so considerable that the part of the Vatican in which
he resides is known officially as the _Maggiordomato_. The earliest name
(not title) of such an officer which has come down to us is that of a
certain priest Ampliatus, who is mentioned in the year 544 as having
accompanied Pope Vigilius to Constantinople for the affair of the Three
Chapters, and being detached from the pontiff’s suite at Sicily on their
way back, with orders to hurry on to Rome, where the concerns of the
Lateran seem to have suffered by his absence. Anatolius, a deacon, held
the office under S. Gregory the Great, who was very particular to have
only virtuous and learned men about him; and in 742 Benedict, a bishop,
held it under S. Zachary, who sent him on a mission to Luitprand, King of
the Lombards. This officer is mentioned for the last time in history as
_Vice-dominus_ in the year 1044, when an archdeacon Benedict served under
Benedict IX. After this period, those who held the analogous position
were styled chamberlains of the Holy Roman Church until 1305, when, the
court being at Avignon, a large share of their duties and privileges was
given to a nobleman of high standing, who was called _Maestro del sacro
Ospizio_.[146]
Under Alexander V., in 1409, the Holy Father having returned to Rome,
mention is made for the first time, in a paper drawn up for the guidance
of the court, of a prefect of the apostolic palace--_Magister domus
pontificiæ_--who was the same as the later majordomo, the name only
having been changed by Urban VIII. in 1626. The series of these high
prelates, to the number of 99--belonging generally to the very first
nobility of Italy, and showing such illustrious names as Colonna,
Gonzaga, Farnese, Frangipani, Visconti, Acquaviva, Cybo, Cenci, Caraffa,
Pico della Mirandola, Piccolomini, Borghese, Borromeo, etc.--begins with
Alexander Mirabelli, a Neapolitan, who was named to the office by Pius
II. in the month of August, 1458.
MAESTRO DI CAMERA.
This officer, whose official title in Latin is _Prefectus cubiculi
Sanctitatis suæ_, is the second palatine prelate. He is the grand
chamberlain of his Holiness, carries out the entire court ceremonial,
and has the supervision of all audiences, as well as admittances of
whatever kind to the presence of the Pope. How important and confidential
is this post which he holds at the door of the papal chambers may best
be judged from the single fact that no one can approach the sovereign
without his knowledge in all and his consent[147] in most cases. He has
sometimes the episcopal character--in truth, was usually in times past
an archbishop _in partibus_; but it is now more customary for him to be
simply in priest’s orders. If, however, he be not already a prelate of
high rank, he is always, immediately after his nomination to the office,
made an apostolic prothonotary, with precedence over all his brethren
in that ancient and honorable college. Like his immediate superior, he
has the privilege of quartering the Pope’s arms with his own. He is the
keeper of the Fisherman’s ring, and at the Pope’s death delivers it up
to the cardinal chamberlain of the Holy Roman College, who gives him a
notarial receipt for it. This celebrated ring is the official one of the
popes, and gets its name from having the figure of S. Peter in a bark
and casting his net into the sea engraved upon it. Above this figure is
cut the name of the reigning pontiff. It is the first among the rings,
but the second in the class of seals, since it only serves as the privy
seal or signet used on apostolic briefs and matters of subordinate
consequence,[148] whereas the Great Seal is used to impress the heads
of SS. Peter and Paul in lead (sometimes, but rarely, in gold) on papal
bulls. At first this ring was a private and not an official one of the
pope; for in a letter from Perugia of March 7, 1265, addressed by Clement
IV. to his nephew Peter Le Gros, he says that he writes to him and to his
other relatives, not _sub bulla, sed sub piscatoris sigillo, quo Romani
Pontifices in suis secretis utuntur_; from which we gather that the ring
was in use some time before, but by whom introduced is unknown, as is
also the precise period when it became official, although this happened
during one or other of the XVth century pontificates. Perhaps the first
time that the now familiar expression, “Given under the Fisherman’s
ring,” is met with in the manner of a formal statement or curial formula,
such as it has been ever since retained, is in a document of Nicholas V.
dated from Rome--_Datum Romæ_--on the 15th of April, 1448.
The institution of this office is extremely ancient, but, like most
others of the court, it has had different names and increased or
diminished attributions at various periods. The modern Romans take a
legitimate pride in being able to deduce many of their great court
offices from the corresponding ones of the Cæsars, to whom their
sovereign has succeeded. Thus this officer is sometimes called in
classical Latin _Magister admissionum_, such an one being mentioned by
the historian Ammianus Marcellinus (xv. 5); and his office _Officium
admissionis_, which is found in Suetonius’ _Life of Vespasian_ (xiv.)
Among the members of the household of S. Gregory the Great in the year
601 there was a certain (S.) Paterius, _Secundicerius_ of the Holy See
(corresponding to the modern sub-dean of the apostolic prothonotaries,
the dean being _Primicerius_). He had to make known to the pope the
names of those who solicited the favor of an interview; and it is
probable that he also gave (as is now given) along with the name some
account of the quality and business of the visitor, for fear that the
pontiff should be unnecessarily intruded upon or brought in contact
with unworthy and perhaps dangerous characters. Investigators into the
origin of the offices of the Holy See have fixed upon this person as
the remote predecessor of the present _Maestro di Camera_; but all the
charges of the palace having been remodelled and placed nearly on their
present footing about four hundred and fifty years ago, and many of
the court records having been lost or stolen during the disturbed era
between the pontificates of Clement V. (1305) and Martin V. (1417)--which
includes the periods of Avignon and the schism--the authentic roll of the
holders of these high offices of state rarely begins earlier than the
XVth century. Thus the first grand chamberlain of the modern series is
Bindaccio Ricasoli of Florence, who was _Magister aulæ palatii_ to John
XXIII. in 1410. The present one is Monsignor Ricci-Paracciani, a Roman,
who, however, has become majordomo by Monsignor Pacca’s promotion. The
_Maestro di Camera_, being constantly in company with exalted personages
who seek an audience of the Holy Father and wait their turn in, or at all
events pass through, the _Anticamera nobile_, which opens immediately
into the Pope’s reception-room, must be distinguished for good breeding
and courtliness, and serve as a model to his subordinates in that august
apartment, lest it be said of him:
“His manners had not the repose
That marks the caste of Vere de Vere.”
Hence we are prepared to find the noblest families of Italy represented
in the office, and notice such patrician names as Odescalchi, Altieri,
Fieschi, Ruffo, Doria, Massimo, Pignatelli, Caracciolo, Barberini,
Riario-Sforza, etc.
UDITORE.
The auditor of his Holiness--_Auditor Papæ_--is the agent-general, most
intimate privy councillor, and canonist of the Pope. He is third in rank
of the palatine prelates, and lived in the Quirinal, where his offices
and the archives were situated, until the present iniquitous occupation,
since which they have been removed to the Torlonia palace, near the
Vatican. This office was instituted by Paul II. (1464-1471), and the
first to hold it was the renowned J. B. Millini, a Roman, who was at the
same time Bishop of Urbino (which was administered by some one else in
his name); he later became a cardinal under Sixtus IV., in 1476. His
successor at the present time is Monsignor Sagretti. Up to this century
the power and general influence of the auditor were extraordinary, since
he had a court of justice and ample jurisdiction, even exercising in the
name of the Pope the supremacy of appeal in many matters. For this reason
the great epigraphist Morcelli, who wrote before these judicial functions
were abolished, called him _Judex sacrarum cognitionum_. Formerly he gave
audience to all comers about matters of equity and appeal on Tuesdays,
in his apartment at the Quirinal, standing in his prelatic robes behind
a low-backed throne supposed by a sort of fiction to be then occupied
by the Pope;[149] hence he was called in choice Latin _Cognoscens vice
sacrâ_--_i.e._, in _lieu_ of his Holiness. The common Italian appellation
_Uditore Santissimo_ is only a corrupt rendering of the Latin _Auditor
Sanctissimi_. This post has always been occupied by one of the ablest
jurists in Italy; and even now the auditor must be both very learned and
most incorruptible, from the part that he takes officially in filling
vacant sees and making other important nominations.
MAESTRO DEL SACRO PALAZZO.
The Master of the Holy Apostolic Palace--_Magister Sacri Palatii
Apostolici_--is one of the most distinguished members for piety and
doctrine of the Dominican Order. He is the Pope’s official theologian,
and usually a consultor of several Roman congregations, more nearly
concerned with matters of faith and morals, as the Inquisition,
Indulgences and Relics, Index, etc. He ranks fourth among the palatine
prelates, and resided until the late invasion in the Quirinal Palace
with his “companion” and two lay brothers of his order. He is considered
an honorary auditor of the Rota, and as such has a place with the
prelates of this class in the papal chapels and reunions. He retains
the habit of his order, but wears on his hat a black prelatical band.
He is _ex-officio_ president of the Theological Faculty in the Roman
University, and the person to whom was entrusted the censorship of the
press. The origin of this office dates from the year 1218, when S.
Dominic, who established the Order of Friars Preachers, suggested to
Honorius III. that it would be proper if some one were charged to give
religious instruction to the many servants of cardinals, prelates, and
others, who used to spend their time idly in useless talk and slanderous
gossip with their brethren of the papal palace while their masters
were expecting an audience or engaged with his Holiness.[150] The Pope
was pleased, and at once appointed Dominic to the good work, who began
by explaining the Epistles of S. Paul.[151] The fruit of these pious
conferences was so apparent that the pope determined to perpetuate
them under the direction of a Dominican. Besides the more familiar
instructions, which were given at first extempore, it was arranged
later that while the pope and court were listening to the preacher
appointed to sermonize in the palace during Advent and Lent, the papal
domestics and other servants should also have the benefit of formal
discourses, but in another part of the building. It was always the father
_master_--_i.e._, doctor--who held forth to them until the XVIth century,
when the duties of his office becoming more onerous, especially by reason
of the many attempts to misuse the recently-discovered art of printing
to corrupt faith and morals in Rome itself, the obligation devolved upon
his companion--_Pro-Magister_ or _Socius_--who also holds three days of
catechism in preparation for each of the four general communions that
are given yearly in the palace. This deputy is appointed by the master,
and is a person of consequence, succeeding sometimes to the higher
office. The present master is Vincenzo Maria Gatti. When the learned
Alexander V. became pope (1409), the Master of the Palace was required
to stand by at his meals, especially on Sundays and festival days, and
be ready to propose difficult points of debate, or to enter into an
argument on any matter and with any person present as the Holy Father
should command.[152] There have been seventy-nine occupants of this
office since its institution (not to count several anti-masters created
by anti-popes), of whom seventeen have been made cardinals, and among
them the celebrated church historian Orsi. The great writer on Christian
antiquities, Mamachi, held this office with distinction. It is one, of
course, in which “brains” rather than “blood” find a place; and since
there is no royal road to learning--for as an old monkish couplet says:
“Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi, sed sæpe cadendo,
Sic homo fit doctus, non vi, sed sæpe studendo”
--we are not surprised that the series of Masters of the Apostolic Palace
exhibits no such names as those that predominate among the chamberlains
and majordomos--“Not many noble” (1 Cor. i. 26).
In the mother-church of the Dominican Order at Rome, _Santa Maria sopra
Minerva_, which is also the title of the first American cardinal,[153]
there is a special vault beneath the chapel of S. Dominic for the
entombment of the masters; but the brutal invaders who now hold
possession of Rome having forbidden all intra-mural burials--evidently
through malice, because, from the dry nature of the soil and the
perfection of Roman masonry, there could not be the slightest danger
from a moderate number of interments within the city--they will have to
sleep after death in some less appropriate spot: “How long shall sinners,
O Lord, how long shall sinners glory?… Thy people, O Lord, they have
brought low: and they have afflicted thy inheritance” (Ps. xciii.)
POWER, ACTION, AND MOVEMENT.
The word “motion” is now commonly used for movement, but it properly
means the action by which a thing is set into movement. This action,
or motion, of course proceeds from an agent, and consists in the
production of an act, or momentum, which must be terminated or received
in a patient. The active power of the agent is its substantial act as
virtually containing in itself all the acts which the agent is ready to
produce, according to its nature. This active power may therefore be
called the virtuality, or terminability, of the act by which the agent
is. The momentum produced by such a power stands to the power in the same
ontological relation as the _now_ of time to the virtuality of God’s
eternity, and as the ubication of a point in space to the virtuality of
God’s immensity; for in all these cases there is question of nothing
else than of an extrinsic terminability and an extrinsic term. We may,
therefore, in treating of motive powers and momentums, follow the same
order of questions which we have followed in our articles on space and
duration.
But the subject which we are about to investigate has a special feature
of its own; because in the exertion of active power, and consequently in
the momentums produced, there is something--_intensity_--which is not to
be met with either in the _when_ or in the _where_. For the _when_ and
the _where_ are mere terms of intervals or distances, and do not partake
in their continuity; from which it follows that they are not quantities,
but merely terms of quantities, whereas the momentum of motion is the
formal principle of the real changes produced by the agent in the
patient. And these changes admit of different degrees, and thus by their
greater or less magnitude reveal the greater or less intensity of the
exertion. The reason of this difference is very plain; for the _when_ and
the _where_ are not efficiently produced by God’s eternity and immensity,
for these divine attributes do not connote action. Their origin is not
to be traced to action, but to resultation, as we have explained in
our preceding articles. The entity of every creature, on the contrary,
proceeds from God as efficient cause--that is, it does not merely result
from the existence of other things, but it is actively produced; and,
since an act produced must have some degree of perfection, creatures are
more or less perfect as to their entity, and therefore have in their own
act a greater or less power of acting, according to the degree of their
entitative perfection. This explains why it is that there is intensity in
all action and in all act produced, whereas there is no intensity in the
_when_ and the _where_.
But, apart from this special feature, the questions regarding active
powers, actions, and the acts produced are entirely similar to those
which we have answered in treating of space and of duration. Nay, more,
the same questions may be viewed under three distinct aspects--viz.,
first, with reference to the divine power and its causality of contingent
things; secondly, with reference to second causes, their actions, and
the momentums produced by them; and, thirdly, with reference to these
momentums themselves and the local movements resulting from them. This
third view of the subject is the only one immediately connected with
the notions of space and of time, and we might limit ourselves to its
consideration. Nevertheless, to shed more light on the whole treatise,
we propose to say something of the other two also; for, by tracing
the actions and the phenomena of the material world to their original
sources, we shall discover that all different grades of reality are
linked with their immediate principles in such a manner as to exhibit
a perpetual analogy of the lower with the higher, till we reach the
highest--God.
To ascertain the truth of this proposition, let us recall to mind the
main conclusions established by us with respect to space. They were as
follows:
1st. There is void space--that is, a capacity which does not imply the
presence of anything created.
2d. Void space is an objective reality.
3d. Void space was not created.
4th. Absolute space is the virtuality, or extrinsic terminability, of
God’s immensity.
5th. Absolute space is not modified by the presence of matter in it--that
is, by its extrinsic termination.
6th. Ubications are extrinsic terms of absolute space, and their
relations have in space itself an extrinsic foundation.
A similar series of conclusions was established in regard to duration.
They were:
1st. There is a standing duration--that is, an actuality which does not
imply succession.
2d. Standing duration is an objective reality.
3d. Standing duration is not created.
4th. Standing duration is the virtuality, or extrinsic terminability, of
God’s eternity.
5th. Standing duration is not modified by the existence in it of created
things--that is, by its extrinsic termination.
6th. The _whens_ of creatures are extrinsic terms of standing duration,
and their relations have in standing duration their extrinsic foundation.
Before we give the analogous conclusions concerning active powers and
their causality, we have to premise that all power ready to act is
said to be _in actu primo_, or in the “first act,” with respect to its
termination and term, or act, which it is ready to produce. Its action
is its termination, and it consists in the causation of a _second act_.
This second act, inasmuch as it exists in its proper term, potency, or
subject, is called _actio in facto esse_--that is, an action wholly
complete, though the action proper is always _in fieri_; for it consists
in the very production of such a second act, as we have just stated. The
result of this production is the existence of a new reality, substantial
or accidental, according to the nature of the act produced. This
well-known terminology we shall use here for the parallel development of
the three classes of questions which we have to answer.
_Origin of Power._--First, then, with regard to the primary origin of
active and moving powers, we lay down the following conclusions:
1st. There is some absolute power--that is, a first act which has no need
of producing any second act.
2d. Absolute power is an objective reality.
3d. Absolute power is uncreated.
4th. Absolute power is the virtuality, or extrinsic terminability, of the
act by which God is.
5th. Absolute power is not modified by the production of effects--that
is, by its extrinsic termination.
6th. The beings thus produced are extrinsic terms of God’s power; and
although, owing to their intrinsic perfection, which may be greater or
less, they can be related to one another by an intrinsic foundation, yet
their “entitative distances” have only an extrinsic foundation--to wit,
God’s omnipotence.
Some of these propositions are so obvious that they might have been
omitted but for the object we have in view of pointing out the
parallelism of absolute power with space and duration.
The first of these conclusions is proved thus: All first act which
naturally needs to produce some second act has an intrinsic and natural
ordination to something distinct from itself; for all effect is really
distinct from its efficient principle. But it cannot be admitted without
absurdity that every first act has such an intrinsic and natural
ordination; for, if everything were thus ordained to something else,
all things would tend to some subordinate end, while there would be no
supreme end at all; for nothing that is ordained to something else can
rank as the supreme end. On the other hand, no subordinate ends can be
admitted without a supreme end. And therefore there must be some first
act which has no intrinsic necessity of producing any second act. Such a
first act is altogether absolute.
The second conclusion is evident. For what we call here “a first act”
is not an imperfect and incomplete act, since it needs no termination;
nor is it a result of mental abstraction and analysis, but a perfect
principle of real operations; for the epithet “first,” by which we
characterize it, does not imply that it lacks anything in its entity,
but, on the contrary, it means that it already contains eminently the
whole reality of the effects which it is competent to produce. Hence it
is clear that, if such effects are objective realities, the first act on
which their production depends is an objective reality, and a much better
one too.
The third conclusion needs no proof, it being evident that whatever
is created must tend to the end of its creation, which is the
manifestation of the perfections of its creator. This manifestation
implies action--viz., a transition of the first act to its second act.
Accordingly, a first act which has no necessary ordination to second acts
cannot be created.
The fourth conclusion follows from the third, since an uncreated act can
be nothing else than the act by which God is. This act, inasmuch as it
eminently contains the reality of all possible things, is extrinsically
terminable, and as thus terminable it exhibits itself as a “first” act.
But, since God has no need of creatures, such a first act has no need
of extrinsic terminations, and, as first, it constitutes omnipotence,
or God’s absolute power. This power in its infinite simplicity has an
infinite range, as it extends to all conceivable reality.
The fifth conclusion will be easily understood by reflecting that the
extrinsic termination of active power consists in giving existence to
contingent things by efficient action. Now, to act efficiently does not
bring about any intrinsic change in the agent; for all intrinsic change
follows from passion, which is the opposite of action. Nor does God, when
giving existence and active powers to any number of creatures, weaken
his own power. For the power imparted to creatures is not a portion of
the divine power, but a product of creation, and nothing, in fact, but
the created act itself. For, as all contingent things are created for
the manifestation of God’s perfections, all creatures must be active;
and as everything acts as it is in act, the act being the principle of
the acting, it follows that all act produced by creation is an active
power of greater or less perfection according to the part it is destined
to fill in the plans of its Maker. This shows that the act by which a
creature is, bears a resemblance to the act by which God is, inasmuch as
it virtually contains in itself all those acts which it is fit to produce
according to its nature. But, since all contingent act is extrinsic
to God, divine omnipotence is not entitatively and intrinsically more
actuated by creation than by non-creation; though, if God creates any
being, from the term produced he will acquire the real denomination of
Creator. Thus the existence of a contingent being is the existence of a
real term, which extrinsically terminates the virtuality of God’s act, in
which it is eminently contained. Its relation to its Creator is one of
total dependence; whilst God’s relation to it is that of first causality.
The foundation of this relation is the action which proceeds from God
and terminates in the creature.
The first part of the sixth conclusion, that beings produced by creation
are extrinsic terms of God’s power, has just been explained. But we say,
moreover, that the entitative distances between such beings have an
extrinsic foundation in God’s omnipotence. By “entitative distance” we
mean the difference in degree between distinct beings--_v.g._, between
a man and a tree--as we have explained in another place.[154] And we
say that, as the distance between two material points in space has its
extrinsic foundation in the virtuality of God’s immensity, so also the
entitative distance of two beings has its extrinsic foundation in the
virtuality of God’s infinite act--that is, in divine omnipotence. In
fact, the different degrees of entity conceivable between the tree and
the man are all virtually contained in God’s omnipotence, just as all the
distinct ubications possible between two points are virtually in God’s
immensity. Hence the foundation of such entitative distances is extrinsic
to the beings compared in the same manner as the foundation of local
distances.
But the terms produced by creative action, inasmuch as they possess a
greater or less perfection in their individual constitution, can be
compared with one another according to the relative degree of their
intrinsic reality; and thus, besides the extrinsic relation just
mentioned, they have a mutual relativity arising from an intrinsic
foundation. The relative degree of reality of a contingent being becomes
known to us through the relative intensity of its active power; which
implies that the beings compared have powers of the same species. If they
are not of the same species, the comparison will give no result.
_Remarks._--Before leaving this part of our subject, we have to notice
that, as the ubication, so also the act produced by creation, can be
considered both absolutely and respectively. A created act, considered
absolutely, is an act intrinsically completed by its essential potency,
and constitutes the being as it is _in actu secundo_. The same act,
considered respectively, or as ordained to something else, is a power
ready to act, and thus it is _in actu primo_ with regard to all the acts
which it is able to produce.
The essential act of a contingent being, be it considered absolutely or
respectively, bears no proportion to the perfection of its Creator, no
more indeed than a point in space to immensity, or a _now_ of time to
eternity. Hence all contingent act or power, whatever be its perfection
or intensity, as compared with God, is like nothing. It is only when
a created act or power is compared with another of the same kind that
we can establish a proportion between them as to degrees of perfection
and of intensity. These degrees are measured by comparing the relative
intensities of the effects produced by distinct causes of the same kind,
acting under the same conditions.
The quantity of efficient power may be conceived as a virtual sum of
degrees of power. In this particular the quantity of power differs
entirely from the quantity of distance; because this latter cannot be
conceived as a virtual sum of ubications. The reason of this difference
is that ubications, as being simple points, have no quantity, and
therefore cannot by addition make up a continuous quantity; whereas the
degrees of power always possess intensity, and are quantities; hence
their sum is a quantity of the same kind.
It may be useful to remark that all continuous quantity has a necessary
connection with the quantity of power, and that all extension owes its
being to the efficacy of some motive principle. In fact, all intervals,
whether of space or of time, are reckoned among continuous quantities
only on account of the quantity of continuous movement which can be
made, or is actually made, in them, as we have explained in a preceding
article; but the quantity of movement is itself to be traced to the
intensity of the momentum produced by the agent, and the momentum to the
intensity of the motive power. As soon as movement is communicated to
a point, its ubication begins to shift and to extend a continuous line
in space; and its _now_, too, for the same reason begins to flow and to
extend continuous time.
When the quantity of power is expressed by a number, its value is
determined, as we have stated, by the intensity of its efficiency in
a given time and fixed conditions. The unit of intensity by which the
amount of the effect produced is measured is arbitrary; for there is
no natural unit for the degrees of intensity, it being evident that
such degrees can be divided and subdivided without end, just like the
continuum. Hence the numbers by which we express degrees of intensity are
only virtually discrete, just as those by which we express continuous
quantities. The ordinary unit assumed for the measure of intensity is
that degree of intensity which causes a unit of weight to measure a unit
of distance in a unit of time. As all these units are arbitrary, it is
evident that such is also the unit of intensity.
Let us remark, also, that the power of natural causes has in its action a
twofold continuity--that is, with regard both to space and to duration.
As long as a natural cause exists, it acts without interruption, owing
to its intrinsic determination, provided there be, as there is always in
fact, some subject capable of being acted upon by it. This constitutes
the continuity of action with regard to duration. On the other hand,
the motive power of such natural causes is exerted, according to the
Newtonian law, throughout an indefinite sphere, as we have shown in
another place;[155] and this constitutes the continuity of action through
space. Moreover, if the point acted upon approaches the agent or recedes
from it, the continuous change of distance will be accompanied by a
continuous change of action; and thus the intensity of the act produced
by the agent will increase or decrease in a continuous manner through
infinitesimal degrees corresponding to the infinitesimal changes of local
relations occurring in infinitesimal instants of time. This relation of
changes is the base of dynamics. But enough on this point.
_Origin of movement._--We may now pass to the conclusions concerning
movement as dependent on its proximate cause. The power by which the
natural causes produce momentums of movement is called “motive power.”
This power is to be found both in material and in spiritual beings; but
as in spiritual substances the exercise of the motive power is subject
to their will, and consists in the application of a nobler power to the
production of a lower effect, we do not and cannot consider the power of
spiritual beings as merely “motive,” for it is, above all, intellective
and volitive. Material things, on the contrary, because they possess
no other power than that of moving, are characterized by it, and are
naturally determined to exercise it according to a law which they cannot
elude. It is of these beings in particular that the following conclusions
are to be understood.
1st. There is in all material creatures a motive power--that is, a first
act of moving--which, considered in its absolute state, has no need of
extrinsic termination, that is, of producing a momentum of movement.
2d. This motive power is an objective reality.
3d. The same power is nothing accidentally superadded to the being of
which it is the power.
4th. This power is the virtuality, or extrinsic terminability, of the act
by which the agent is.
5th. This power is not modified by the production of momentums in
extrinsic terms.
6th. The momentums thus produced are second acts of the motive power,
extrinsic to it; and though, owing to their intensity, which may be
greater or less, they can be related to one another through an intrinsic
foundation, yet their entitative distances have only an extrinsic
foundation--to wit, the agent’s power.
Some of these propositions are quite evident; but our present object is
not only to explain what may require a special discussion, but also,
and principally, to dissect our subject in such a manner as to make
it manifest that a perpetual analogy exists between the conditions and
the principles of all kinds of continuum, and that in all of them the
transition from the absolute to the relative, from the cause to the
effect, and from the formal reason to its formal result, is made through
a like process and through similar degrees. For this reason we think that
even those conclusions which seem too obvious to deserve mention become
interesting and serve a good purpose; for in the parallel treatment
of analogous subjects, those things which are clearer throw light on
those which are more abstruse, and about which we often feel a certain
hesitation.
The first of our present conclusions needs only a short explanation. When
we say that in every creature there is a motive power which, _considered
in its absolute state_, has no need of producing a momentum, we mean that
in every creature there is an act which is a principle of activity, but
that the exercise of this activity is not required for the substantial
perfection and essential constitution of the creature itself, though
it may be required for some other reason, as we shall see presently.
In fact, every substance has its own complete being independently of
accidents; and since the exertion of motive power is an accident, every
substance is entitatively independent of it. We conceive that if God had
created nothing but an element of matter, such an element would indeed
(on its own part) be ready to act and to produce a momentum of movement;
but, as there would be no subject capable of receiving a momentum, the
motive power would remain _in actu primo_--that is, without actual
exertion. And yet it is evident that the non-existence of other elements
can have no bearing on the intrinsic constitution and substantial
perfection of the element in the question. Therefore the power of an
element of matter is a first act, which, as far as the entity of the
element itself is concerned, has no need of producing any second act.
Nevertheless, since all creatures must in some manner glorify God
as long as they exist, because such is the true and highest end of
their existence, hence to every created power some proportionate term
or subject corresponds, in which its exertion is received without
interruption. In the same manner as the understanding never lacks an
intelligible object, and the sense never lacks a sensible term, about
which to exercise itself by immanent operation, the motive power
of inferior beings never fails to meet a proportionate--that is,
movable--term and to impress upon it a momentum of a certain intensity.
Hence, when we regard, not the substance of natural things as such,
but the natural necessity they are under of tending constantly to the
ultimate end of their creation, we see that their first act of moving
must always entail some second act, or momentum, in all the terms which
it can reach according to its natural determination.
The second conclusion is self-evident; for, if the principle of real
movement were not an objective reality, a real effect would proceed from
an unreal cause--which is absurd. Nor does it matter that the power is
only a “first” act. For, as we have explained above, it is first as
compared with the acts which it can produce, but it is intrinsically
complete in the entity of the agent, as it is terminated to its
substantial term.
The third conclusion is nothing but a corollary of the well-known axiom
that in all things the principle of operation is the substantial act:
_Forma est id quo agens agit_, and _Principium essendi est principium
operandi_. We have proved in another place[156] that no natural accident
possesses active power or is actually concerned in any of the effects
produced by the agent. This truth should be well understood by the modern
scientists who very commonly mistake the conditions of the action for
the active principle. Of course no creature can act independently of
accidental conditions; but these conditions have no bearing on the active
power itself--they only determine (formally and not efficiently) the
mode of its application according to a constant law. Thus the distance
of two material points has no _active_ influence on their motive power
or on their mutual action, but only constitutes the two points in a
certain relation to one another; and when such a relation is altered, the
action is changed, not because the power is modified, but because its
determination to act--that is, its very nature--demands that it should
in its application follow the Newtonian law of the inverse ratio of the
squared distances.
The philosophers of the old school admitted, but never proved, that,
although the substantial form is the main principle of activity in
natural things, nevertheless this principle was in need of some
accidental entity, that it might be proximately disposed to produce its
act. This opinion, too, originated in the confusion of active power
with the conditions on which the mode of its exertion depends. What
they called “active qualities” is now acknowledged to be, not a new
kind of active power superadded to the substantial forms, but merely a
result of the concurrence of many simple powers acting under determinate
conditions. The accidental change of the conditions entails the change
of the result and action, but the active powers evidently remain the
same. The ancients said also that the substantial forms were the active
principles of substantial generations, whereas the “active qualities”
were the active principles of mere alterations. As we have shown that
the whole theory of substantial generations, as understood by the
peripatetic school, is based on assumption and equivocation, and leads to
impossibilities,[157] we may be dispensed from giving a new refutation of
the opinion last mentioned.
Our fourth conclusion directly follows from the general principle that
the act by which a thing has its first being is its principle of action:
_Quo aliquid primo est, eo agit_. The substantial act, considered as to
its absolute entity, does not connote action, but simply constitutes the
being of which it is the act. In order to conceive it as an active power,
we must refer to the effects which it virtually contains--that is, we
must consider its virtuality. In this manner what is a second act with
regard to the substance of the agent, will be conceived as a first act
with reference to the effects it can produce, according to a received
axiom: _Actus secundus essendi est actus primus operandi_.
The fifth conclusion, notwithstanding the contrary opinion of many
philosophers, is quite certain. For all intrinsic modification is the
result of passive reception or passion. Now, to produce a momentum of
movement is action, not passion. Therefore, when such a momentum is
produced, no other subject is intrinsically modified by it except the one
which passively receives it. It is therefore the being which is acted
on, not that which acts, that acquires an intrinsic modification. The
power of the agent is not entitatively and intrinsically more actuated
by action than by non-action. Its action is an extrinsic termination,
and gives it nothing but the real denomination of agent, by which it is
really related to the term acted on. The patient, by its reception of
the momentum, becomes similarly related to the agent, as is evident. And
the relation consists in this: that the patient acquires formally an
act which the agent virtually contains. This relation is of accidental
causality on the one side and of accidental dependence on the other. The
foundation of the relation is the accidental action as coming from the
one and terminating in the other.
As everything that is in movement must have received the motion from
a distinct agent, according to the principle _Omne quod movetur, ab
alio movetur_, it follows that whatever is in movement is accidentally
dependent on an extrinsic mover; and, since all material elements are
both movers and moved, they all have a mutual accidental causality and
dependence.
Our sixth conclusion is sufficiently clear from what has been said
concerning the sixth conclusion of the preceding series. The momentum
of movement is evidently the second act of the motive power--that is,
the extrinsic term of its exertion. The entitative distance between two
momentums produced by the same mover is an extrinsic relation; for its
foundation is the virtuality of the act by which the agent is, as has
been explained above. But the same momentums, as possessing greater or
less intensity, can also be compared with one another according to their
intrinsic entity or degree; and thus they will be found to have a mutual
relation arising from an intrinsic foundation.
_Remarks._--As the ubication, so also the momentum produced by accidental
action, can be considered both absolutely and respectively. The momentum,
considered absolutely, is an act received in a subject--an absolute
momentum, an extrinsic term of the virtuality of the motive principle;
and, as such a momentum is only one out of the innumerable acts which
can proceed from the agent, it has an entity infinitely less than that
of the agent. It is evident, in fact, that between a substantial and
an accidental act there must be an infinite entitative disproportion,
both because no substance can be substantially changed by its accidents,
and because the substantial act can never be exhausted, and not even
weakened, by the production of accidental acts, as we have established in
another place.[158] The momentum is considered respectively when it is
compared with another momentum, in which case we can find the relation of
the one to the other as to intensity. This intensity is measured by the
quantity of the movement to which they give rise when not counteracted.
The unit of intensity is arbitrary in the momentums, as in their
principles, for the same reason--that is, because in neither case a
natural unit of intensity can be found. The number expressing the
relative intensity of a momentum is only virtually discrete, because
the momentum is only virtually compounded, since it is not a number of
distinct acts, but one act equivalent to many.
_Movement and its affections._--The production of a momentum entails
movement. The general definition of movement, according to Aristotle and
S. Thomas, is _Actus existentis in potentia ut in potentia_, or, as we
would say, an actual passage from one potential state to another. Now,
all created being is potential in two manners: first, on account of its
passive receptivity; secondly, on account of its affectibility, which is
a consequence of its passivity, as we have explained in the “Principles
of Real Being.”[159] Hence the momentum of movement, inasmuch as it is
received in the patient, actuates its passive potency; and inasmuch as
its reception entails a certain mode of being, it affects its resultant
potentiality. But besides this double potentiality, which is intrinsic to
the subject, there is another potentiality which refers to an extrinsic
term, and for this reason movement is considered both as it is a
modification of its subject, _ratione subjecti_, and as it points at an
extrinsic term, _ratione termini_.
With regard to its subject, movement is usually divided into _immanent_
and _transient_. It is called immanent when it results from immanent
acts, as when the soul directs its attention to such or such an object
of thought; and it is called transient when it brings about a change in
a subject distinct from the agent, as when a man moves a stone, or when
the sun moves the earth. But this is inaccurate language; for what is
transient in these cases is the _action_, not the _movement_.
With regard to its term, movement is divided into two kinds--that is,
movement to a place, _motus ad ubi_, and movement towards a certain
degree of perfection or intensity of power, _motus virtutis_.[160] The
first is called _local_ movement, of which we will speak presently. The
second is subdivided into _intension_, _remission_, and _alteration_.
Intension and remission are the acquisition or loss of some degree of
perfection or of intensity with regard to power and qualities; alteration
is the passage from one kind of quality or property to another. Thus, in
water, heat is subject to intension and remission; but when the cohesive
force of the molecules is superseded by the expansive force of vapor,
there is alteration.
It is important to notice that there is no _motus virtutis_ in primitive
elements of matter. The exertion of their power varies indeed according
to the Newtonian law, but the power itself is always exactly the same,
as its principle is the substantial act, which cannot be modified by
accidental action. It is only in material compounds that the _motus
virtutis_ can be admitted, for the reason that the active powers and
qualities in them are a result of composition; hence a change in the
mode of the composition brings about a change in the resultant. So also
in spiritual substances there is no _motus virtutis_, because their
active faculties are always substantially the same. True it is that the
intellect has also its passivity with regard to intelligible species,
and that it acts by so much the more easily and perfectly in proportion
as it is better furnished with intelligible species distinctly expressed
and arranged according to their logical and objective connection. But
this cannot mean that the active power of the intellect can be increased,
but only that it can be placed in more suitable conditions for its
operations. And the like is to be said of all acquired habits; for they
give a greater facility of acting, not by intensifying the intrinsic
power, but by placing the active faculty in such conditions as are more
favorable for its operation.
But let us revert to local movement. This movement may be defined as _the
act of gliding through successive ubications_. Such a gliding alters the
relations of one body to another, as is evident, but it involves no new
intrinsic modification of the subject. As long as the subject continues
to move under the same momentum, its intrinsic mode of being remains
uniformly the same, while its extrinsic relations to other bodies are
in continual change. Hence the local movement of any point of matter
merely consists in the act of extending from ubication to ubication, or,
as we may say, in _the evolution of the intensity of the momentum into
continuous extension_. The reason of this evolution is that the momentum
impressed on a subject has not only a definite intensity, but also a
definite direction in space; whence it follows that the subject which
receives the momentum receives a determination to describe a line in a
definite direction, which it must follow, owing to its inertia, with an
impetus equal to the intensity of the momentum itself. And in this manner
a material point, by the successive flowing of its ubication, describes a
line in space, or evolves the intensity of its momentum into extension.
Hence, of local movement we can predicate both _intensity_ and
_extension_. The intensity is the formal principle, which, by actuating
the inertia or mobility of the subject, evolves itself into extension.
The extension is the actual evolution of the momentum, and constitutes
the essence of local movement, which is always _in fieri_. And this
is what is especially pointed out in Aristotle’s words: _Motus est
actus existentis in potentia, ut in potentia_. The _actus_ refers to
the intensity, which is not _in fieri_, but has a definite actuality;
whilst the _in potentia ut in potentia_ clearly refers to the evolution
of extension, which is continually _in fieri_ under the influx of said
act. Accordingly, local movement is both intensive and extensive. But
this last epithet is to be looked upon as equivalent to “extending,” not
to “extended”; for it is the line drawn, or the track of the movement
already made, that is properly “extended,” whereas the movement itself is
the act of extending it.
The formal intensity of local movement is called _velocity_. We say the
_formal_ intensity, because movement has also a _material_ intensity.
The formal intensity regards the rate of movement of each element of
matter taken by itself, and it is greater or less according as it evolves
a greater or a less extension in equal times. The material intensity
regards the quantity of matter which is moving with a given velocity, and
is measured by the product of the velocity into the mass of the moving
body. This product is called the momentum of the body, or its quantity of
movement.
Local movement is subject to three affections--viz., _intension_,
_remission_, and _inflexion_. In fact, since local movement consists
in extending with a certain velocity in a certain direction, it is
susceptible of being modified either by a change of velocity, which
will intensify or weaken it, or by a change of direction--that is, by
inflexion. So long, however, as no agent disturbs the actual movement
already imparted to a body, the movement must necessarily continue in
the same direction and with the same velocity; for matter, owing to its
inertia, cannot modify its own state. This amounts to saying that the
tendency uniformly to preserve its rate and its direction is not an
accidental affection, but the very nature, of local movement.
This being premised, we are going to establish a series of conclusions,
concerning movement and its affections, parallel to that which we have
developed in the preceding pages respecting power and its exertions. The
reader will see that the chain of our analogies must here end; for, since
movement is not action, it affects nothing new, and produces no extrinsic
terms, but only entails changes of local relations. On the other hand,
the affections of local movement are not of a transient, but of an
immanent, character, and thus they give rise to no new entity, but are
themselves identified with the movement of which they are the modes. Our
conclusions are the following:
1st. There is in all local movement something permanent--that is, a
general determination of a lasting character, which has no need of being
individuated in one manner more than in another.
2d. This constant determination is an objective reality.
3d. This same determination is nothing accidentally superadded to local
movement.
4th. This determination is the virtuality of the momentum of movement, or
the act of evolving extension in a definite direction.
5th. This determination is not intrinsically modified by any accidental
modification of local movement.
6th. The affections of local movement are intrinsic and intransitive
modes, which identify themselves with the movement which they modify.
The first of these conclusions is briefly proved thus: whatever is a
subject of real modifications has something permanent. Local movement
is a subject of real modifications. Therefore, local movement involves
something permanent.
The second conclusion is self-evident.
The third conclusion, too, is evident. For whatever is accidentally
superadded to a thing can be accidentally taken away, and therefore
cannot belong to the thing permanently and invariably. Hence the constant
and fixed determination in question cannot be an accident of local
movement.
The fourth conclusion is a corollary of the third. For nothing is
necessarily permanent in local movement, except that which constitutes
its essence. Now, its essence lies in this: that it must evolve
extension at the rate and in the direction determined by the momentum
of which it is the exponent. Therefore the permanent determination of
which we are speaking is nothing else than the virtuality of the momentum
itself as developing into extension. And since the momentum by which the
moving body is animated has a determinate intensity and direction, which
virtually contains a determinate velocity and direction of movement,
it follows that the permanent determination in question consists in
the actual tendency of movement to evolve uniformly and in a straight
line--_uniformly_, because velocity is the form of movement, and the
velocity determined by the intensity of the actual momentum is actually
one; _in a straight line_, because the actual momentum being one, it
gives but one direction to the movement, which therefore will be straight
in its tendency. Whence we conclude that it is of the essence of local
movement to have _an actual tendency to evolve uniformly in a straight
line_.
Some will object that local movement may lack both uniformity and
straightness. This is quite true, but it does not destroy our conclusion.
For, as movement is always _in fieri_, and exists only by infinitesimal
instants in which it is impossible to admit more than one velocity and
one direction, it remains always true that within every instant of its
existence the movement is straight and uniform, and that in every such
instant it tends to continue in the same direction and at the same
rate--that is, with the velocity and direction it actually possesses.
This velocity and direction may, of course, be modified in the following
instant; but in the following instant, too, the movement will tend to
evolve uniformly and in a straight line suitably to its new velocity
and direction. Whence it is manifest that, although in the continuation
of the movement there may be a series of different velocities and
directions, yet the tendency of the movement is, at every instant of its
existence, to extend uniformly in a straight line. This truth is the
foundation of dynamics.
Our fifth conclusion is sufficiently evident from what we have just
said. For, whatever be the intensity and direction of the movement, its
determination to extend uniformly in a straight line is not interfered
with.
Our last conclusion has no need of explanation. For, since the affections
of local movement are the result of new momentums impressed on the
subject it is plain that they are intrinsic modes characterizing a
movement individually different from the movement that preceded. The
tendency to evolve uniformly in a straight line remains unimpaired,
as we have shown; but the movement itself becomes entitatively--viz.,
quantitatively--different.
_Remarks._--Local movement is divided into _uniform_ and _varied_.
Uniform movement we call that which has a constant velocity. For, as
velocity is the form of movement, to say that a movement is uniform is
to say that it has but one velocity in the whole of its extension. We
usually call “uniform” all movement whose apparent velocity is constant;
but, to say the truth, no rigorously uniform movement exists in nature
for any appreciable length of time. In fact, every element of matter lies
within the sphere of action of all other elements, and is continually
acted on, and continually receives new momentums; the evident consequence
of which is that its real movement must undergo a continuous change of
velocity. Hence rigorously uniform movement is limited to infinitesimal
time.
Varied movement is that whose rate is continually changing. It is divided
into _accelerated_ and _retarded_; and, when the acceleration or the
retardation arises from a constant action which in equal times imparts
equal momentums, the movement is said to be _uniformly_ accelerated or
retarded.
_Epilogue._--The explanation we have given of space, duration, and
movement suffices, if we are not mistaken, to show what is the true
nature of the only continuous quantities which can be found in the
real order of things. The reader will have seen that the source of all
continuity is motive power and its exertion. It is such an exertion
that engenders local movement, and causes it to be continuous in its
entity, in its local extension, and in its duration. In fact, why is the
local movement continuous _in its entity_? Because the motive action
strengthens or weakens it by continuous infinitesimal degrees in each
successive infinitesimal instant, thus causing it to pass through all
the degrees of intensity designable between its initial and its final
velocity. And again: why is the local movement continuous _in its local
extension_? Because it is the property of an action which proceeds from
a point in space and is terminated to another point in space, to give a
local direction to the subject in which the momentum is received; whence
it follows that the subject under the influence of such a momentum must
draw a continuous line in space. Finally, why is the local movement
continuous _in its duration_? Because, owing to the continuous change of
its ubication, the subject of the movement extends its absolute _when_
from _before_ to _after_, in a continuous succession, which is nothing
but the duration of the movement.
Hence absolute space and absolute duration, which are altogether
independent of motive actions, are not _formally_ continuous, but only
supply the extrinsic reason of the possibility of formal continuums.
It is matter in movement that by the flowing of its _ubi_ from _here_
to _there_ actually marks out a continuous line in space, and by the
flowing of its _quando_ from _before_ to _after_ marks out a continuous
line in duration. Thus it is not absolute space, but the line drawn in
space, that is _formally_ extended from _here_ to _there_; and it is not
absolute duration, but the line successively drawn in duration, that is
_formally_ extended from _before_ to _after_.
With regard to the difficulties which philosophers have raised at
different times against local movement we have very little to say. An
ancient philosopher, when called to answer some arguments against the
possibility of movement, thought it sufficient to reply: _Solvitur
ambulando_--“I walk; therefore movement is possible.” This answer was
excellent; but, while showing the inanity of the objections, it took no
notice of the fallacies by which they were supported. We might follow the
same course; for the arguments advanced against movement are by no means
formidable. Yet we will mention and solve three of them before dismissing
the subject.
_First._ If a body moves, it moves where it is, not where it is not. But
it cannot move where it is; for to move implies not to remain where it
is, and therefore bodies cannot move. The answer is, that bodies neither
move where they are nor where they are not, but _from_ the place where
they are _to_ the place where they are not.
_Second._ A material element cannot describe a line in space between
two points without gliding through all the intermediate ubications.
But the intermediate ubications are infinite, as infinite points can
be designated in any line; and the infinite cannot be passed over. The
answer is that an infinite multitude cannot be measured by one of its
units; and for this reason the infinite multitude of ubications which may
be designated between the terms of a line cannot be measured by a unit
of the same kind. Nevertheless, a line can be measured by movement--that
is, not by the ubication itself, but _by the flowing_ of an ubication;
because the flowing of the ubication is continuous, and involves
continuous quantity; and therefore it is to be considered as containing
in itself its own measure, which is a measure of length, and which may
serve to measure the whole line of movement. If the length of a line
were an infinite sum of ubications--that is, of mathematical points--the
objection would have some weight; but the length of the line is evidently
not a sum of points. The line is a continuous quantity evolved by the
flowing of a point. It can therefore be measured by the flowing of a
point. For as the line described can be divided and subdivided without
end, so also the time employed in describing it can be divided and
subdivided without end. Hence the length of a line described in a finite
length of time can be conceived as an infinite virtual multitude of
infinitesimal lengths, just in the same manner as the time employed in
describing it can be conceived as an infinite multitude of infinitesimal
instants. Now, the infinite can measure the infinite; and therefore it
is manifest that an infinite multitude of infinitesimal lengths can be
measured by the flowing of a point through an infinite multitude of
infinitesimal instants.[161]
_Third._ The communication of movement, as we know by experience,
requires time; and yet time arises from movement, and cannot begin before
the movement is communicated. How, then, will movement be communicated?
The answer is that time and movement begin together, and evolve
simultaneously in the very act of the communication of movement. It is
not true, then, that all communication of movement requires time. Our
experience regards only the communication of _finite_ movement, which,
of course, cannot be made except the action of the agent continue for a
finite time. But movement is always communicated by infinitesimal degrees
in infinitesimal instants; and thus the beginning of the motive action
coincides with the beginning of the movement, and this coincides with the
beginning of its duration.
And here we end. The considerations which we have developed in our
articles on space, duration, and movement have, we think, a sufficient
importance to be regarded with interest by those who have a philosophical
turn of mind. The subjects which we have endeavored so far to investigate
are scarcely ever examined as deeply as they deserve by the modern
writers of philosophical treatises; but there is no doubt that a clearer
knowledge of those subjects must enable us to extricate ourselves
from many difficulties to be met in other parts of metaphysics. It is
principally in order to solve the sophisms of the idealists and of the
transcendental pantheists that we need an exact, intellectual notion of
space and of time. We see how Kant, the father of German idealism and
pantheism, was led into numerous errors by his misconception of these two
points, and how his followers, owing to a like hallucination, succeeded
in obscuring the light of their noble intellects, and were prompted to
deny and revile the most certain and fundamental principles of human
reasoning. In fact, a mistaken notion of space lies at the bottom of
nearly all their philosophical blunders. If we desire to refute their
false theories by direct and categorical arguments, we must know how far
we can trust the popular language on space, and how we can correct its
inaccuracies so as to give precision to our own phraseology, lest by
conceding or denying more than truth demands we furnish them with the
means of retorting against our argumentation. This is the main reason
that induced us to treat of space, duration, and movement in a special
series of articles, as we entertained the hope that we might thus help in
cutting the ground from under the feet of the pantheist by uprooting the
very germ of his manifold errors.
NOT YET.
Methought the King of Terrors came my way:
Whom all men flee, and none esteem it base.
But lo! his smile forbidding me dismay,
I stood--and dared to look him in the face.
“So soon!” the only murmur in my heart:
For I had shaped the deeds of many years--
Ambitioning atonement, and, in part,
To reap in joy what I had sown in tears.
Then, turning to Our Lady: “O my Queen!
’Twere very sweet already to have won
My crown, and pass to see as I am seen,
And nevermore offend thy Blessed Son:
Yet would I stay--and for myself, I own:--
To stand, at last, the nearer to thy throne.”
SONGS OF THE PEOPLE.
Without going back to abstruse speculations on the origin of music in
England (there is a mania in our century for discovering the “origin”
of everything, and theorizing on it, long before a sufficient number of
facts has been collected even to make a pedestal for the most modest and
limited theory), we gather from the mention of it in old English poems,
and books on ballads and songs, glees and catches, that it existed in a
very creditable form at least eight hundred years ago. Indeed, there was
national and popular music before this, and the Welsh songs, the oldest
of all, point far back to a legendary past as the source of their being.
The first foreign song that mingled with the rude music of the early
Britons was doubtless that of the Christian missionaries in the first
century of our era, and after that there can have been little music among
the converted Britons but what was more or less tinged with a foreign
and Christian element. We know, too, that at various times foreign monks
either came or were invited to the different kingdoms in England to
teach the natives the ecclesiastical chant. Gardiner, in his _Music of
Nature_, says that “as the invaders came from all parts of the Continent,
our language and music became a motley collection of sounds and words
unlike that of any other people; and though we have gained a language of
great force and extent, yet we have lost our primitive music, as not a
single song remains that has the character of being national.” He also
says that before music was cultivated as an art, England, in common with
other countries, had its national songs, but that these, with the people
who sang them, were driven by the conquerors into Ireland, Scotland,
and Wales. This assertion is rather a sweeping one, and the recognized
formula about the ancient inhabitants of Britain being _all_ crowded
into certain particular districts is one that will bear modifying and
correcting. The British Anthropological Society has, during the last ten
years, made interesting researches in the field of race-characteristics
in different parts of England, and an accumulation of facts has gone far
to prove the permanence of some Gaelic, Cymric, and Celtic types in other
parts, exclusive of Wales and Cornwall. Dr. Beddoe and Mr. Mackintosh
have published the result of their observations, and the latter concludes
that “a considerable portion of the west Midland and southwestern
counties are scarcely distinguishable from three of the types found in
Wales--namely, the British, Gaelic, and Cymrian. In Shropshire, and
ramifying to the east and southeast, the Cymrian type may be found in
great numbers, though not predominating.… In many parts of the southwest
the prevailing type among the working classes is decidedly Gaelic.… North
Devon and Dorset may be regarded as its headquarters in South Britain.”
Then, again, the district along the borders of Wales, especially between
Taunton and Oswestry, and as far east as Bath, shows a population more
naturally intellectual than that of any other part of England, and that
without any superiority of primary education to account for it. The
people are what might be called Anglicized Welsh, and there is among
them a greater taste for solid knowledge than in the heart of England.
Lancashire is to a great extent Scandinavian, and also somewhat Cymrian,
as we have seen, and there the people are known as a shrewd, hardy race,
thoughtful and fond of study, and great adepts in music.
At a large school in Tiverton, Devonshire, nine-tenths of the boys
presented the most exaggerated Gaelic physiognomy; while at another, near
Chichester, the girls were all of the most unmistakable Saxon type. We
need not go further in this classification, and only introduced it to
show that massing together all British types in Wales and Cornwall is a
fallacy, such as all hasty generalizations are. It is not so certain,
therefore, that there exists no indigenous element in the old songs that
have survived, though in many an altered form, in some of the rural
districts of England. Then, again, how is the word “national” used--in
the sense of indigenous, or of popular, or of exclusively belonging to
one given country? English music was, before the Commonwealth, at least
as indigenous as the English language, as that gradually grew up and
welded itself together. As to popularity, there was a style of song--some
specimens of which we shall give--which was known and used by the
poorest and humblest, and a style, too, far removed from the plebeian,
though it may have been rather sentimental. Then glees and catches are,
though of no very great antiquity, essentially English, and are scarcely
known in any other country. If “national” stands for “political,” as many
people at this day seem to take for granted, then, indeed, England has
not much to boast of. That music is born rather of oppression and defeat,
and loves to commemorate a people’s undying devotion to their own race,
laws, customs, and rulers. Irish and Welsh and Jacobite songs exhibit
that style best, though only the first of the three have any present
significance, the two other kinds having long ago become more valuable
for their intrinsic or historical merit than for their political meaning.
Certain modern English songs, such as “Ye Mariners of England,” “Rule
Britannia,” “The Death of Nelson,” might be called national songs in the
political sense; but “God Save the King,” though patriotic and loyal, is
thoroughly German in style and composition, and therefore hardly deserves
the title national.
The Welsh have kept their musical taste pure. Mr. Mackintosh, in his
paper on the _Comparative Anthropology of England and Wales_, says of
the quiet and thoughtful villagers of Glan Ogwen, near the great Penrhyn
slate quarries, that “their appreciation of the compositions of Handel
and other great musicians is remarkable; and they perform the most
difficult oratorios with a precision of time and intonation unknown in
any part of England, except the West Riding of Yorkshire, Lancashire,
Worcester, Gloucester, and Hereford.” The three latter are towns where
the musical festivals are so frequent that the taste of the people
cannot help being educated up to a good standard. Hereford, too, is
very near the Welsh border. “The musical ear of the Welsh is extremely
accurate. I was once present in a village church belonging to the late
Dean of Bangor, when the choir sang an anthem composed by their leader,
and repeated an unaccompanied hymn-tune five or six times without the
slightest lowering of pitch. The works of Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, and
Mozart are republished with Welsh words at Ruthin and several other
towns, and their circulation is almost incredible. At book and music
shops of a rank where in England negro melodies would form the staple
compositions, Handel is the great favorite; and such tunes as ‘Pop goes
the Weasel’ would not be tolerated. The native airs are in general very
elegant and melodious. Some of them, composed long before Handel, are in
the Handelian style; others are remarkably similar to some of Corelli’s
compositions. The less classical Welsh airs, in 3-8 time, such as ‘Jenny
Jones’ are well known. Those in 2-4 time are often characterized by a
sudden stop in the middle or at the close of a measure, and a repetition
of pathetic slides or slurs.”
Much of this eulogium might be equally applied to the people of
Lancashire, especially the men, who know the great oratorios by heart,
and sing the choruses faultlessly among themselves, not only at large
gatherings, but in casual reunions, whenever three or four happen to
meet. Their part-singing, too, in glees, both ancient and modern, is
admirable, and they have scarcely any taste for the low songs which are
only too popular in many parts of England.
The songs of chivalry were another graft on the stock of English music,
and the honor paid to the bards and minstrels was a mingling of the love
of a national institution at least as old as the Druids--some say much
older--and of the enthusiasm produced by the metrical relation of heroic
feats of arms. The Crusades gave a great impulse to the troubadours’
songs, while the ancient British custom of commemorating the national
history by the oral tradition and the music of the harpers, seemed to
merge into and strengthen the new order of minstrels. Long before the
bagpipe became the peculiar--almost national--instrument of Scotland,
the harp held that position, as it has not yet ceased to do, in Ireland
and Wales. The oldest harp now in Great Britain is an Irish one, which
was already old in 1064. It is now in the museum of Trinity College,
Dublin. These ancient instruments were very different from the modern
ones on which our grandmothers used to display their skill before the
pianoforte became, to its detriment, the fashionable instrument for young
ladies; and even now the Irish and Welsh harps are made exactly on the
old models, and have no pedals. But the use of the harp was not confined
to the Welsh, and in the reign of King John, in the XIIth century, on
the occasion of an attack made on the old town of Chester by the Welsh
during the great yearly fair, it is recorded in the town annals that the
commandant assembled all the minstrels who had come to the place upon
that occasion, and marched them in the night, with their instruments
playing, against the enemy, who, upon hearing so vast a sound, were
filled with such terror and surprise that they instantly fled. In memory
of this famous exploit, no doubt suggested by the Biblical narrative of
Gideon’s successful stratagem, a meeting of minstrels is annually kept up
to this day, with one of the Dutton family at their head, to whom certain
privileges are granted. In the reign of Henry I. the minstrels were
formed into corporate bodies, and enjoyed certain immunities in various
parts of the kingdom. Gardiner[162] says that “the most accomplished
became the companions and favorites of kings, and attended the court
in all its expeditions.” Perhaps we may refer the still extant office
of poet-laureate to this custom of retaining a court minstrel near the
person of the sovereign. In the time of Elizabeth the profession of
a harper had become a degraded one, only embraced by idle, low, and
dissolute characters; and so it has remained ever since, through the
various stages of ballad-monger, street-singer and fiddler, in which the
memory of the once noble office has been merged or lost. In Scotland the
piper, a personage of importance, has taken the place of the harper since
the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, who introduced the pipes from France;
but in Wales the minstrel, with his harp, upheld his respectability much
longer, and even now most of the old families, jealous and proud of their
national customs, retain their bard as an officer of the household. The
writer has seen and heard one of these ancient minstrels, in the service
of a family living near Llanarth, the mistress (a widow) making it her
special business to promote the keeping up of all old national customs.
She was an excellent farmer, too, and had a pet breed of small black
Welsh sheep, whose wool she prepared for the loom herself, and with which
she clothed her family and household. In the neighboring town she had got
up an annual competition of harpers and choirs for the performance of
Welsh music exclusively. The concert was always the occasion of a regular
country festivity, ending with a ball, and medals and other prizes were
given by her own hand to the best instrumental and vocal artists.
In Percy’s _Reliques_ a description is given of the dress and appearance
of a mediæval bard, as personated at a pageant given at Kenilworth in
honor of Queen Elizabeth. The glory of the brotherhood was already so
much a thing of the past that it was thought worth while to introduce
this figure into a mock procession. This very circumstance is enough
to mark the decline of the art in those days, but already a new sort
of popular song had sprung up to replace the romances of chivalry. “A
person,” says Percy, “very meet for the purpose, … his cap off; his head
seemly rounded tonsure-wise, fair-kembed [combed], that with a sponge
daintily dipt in a little capon’s grease was finely smoothed, to make it
shine like a mallard’s wing. His beard smugly shaven; and yet his shirt,
after the new trink, with ruffs fair starched, sleeked and glittering
like a pair of new shoes; marshalled in good order with a setting stick
and strut, that every ruff stood up like a wafer.[163] A long gown of
Kendal-green gathered at the neck with a narrow gorget, fastened afore
with a white clasp and a keeper close up to the chin, but easily, for
heat, to undo when he list. Seemly begirt in a red caddis girdle; from
that a pair of capped Sheffield knives hanging at two sides. Out of his
bosom was drawn forth a lappet of his napkin [handkerchief] edged with a
blue lace, and marked with a true-love, a heart, and _D_ for Damain; for
he was but a bachelor yet. His gown had long sleeves down to mid-leg,
lined with white cotton. His doublet-sleeves of black worsted; upon them
a pair of poynets [wristlets, from _poignet_] of tawny chamlet, laced
along the wrist with blue threaden points; a wealt towards the hand of
fustian-a-napes. A pair of red neather stocks, a pair of pumps [shoes] on
his feet, with a cross cut at the toes for corns; not new, indeed, yet
cleanly blackt with soot, and shining as a shoeing-horn. About his neck
a red riband suitable to his girdle. His harp in good grace dependent
before him. His wrest [tuning-key] tyed to a green lace, and hanging
by. Under the gorget of his gown, a fair chain of silver as a squire
minstrel of Middlesex, that travelled the country this summer season,
unto fairs and worshipful men’s houses. From his chain hung a scutcheon,
with metal and color, resplendent upon his breast, of the ancient arms of
Islington.” The peculiarities marking his shoes no doubt referred to the
long pedestrian tours of the early minstrels.
Chaucer, in the XIVth century, makes frequent mention of music, both
vocal and instrumental. Of his twenty-nine Canterbury Pilgrims, six could
either play or sing, and two, the Squire and the Mendicant Friar, could
do both. Of the Prioress he quaintly says:
“Ful wel she sangé the service devine,
Entunéd in hire nose ful swetély.”
Dr. Burney thinks that part-singing was already known and practised in
Chaucer’s time, and draws this inference from the notice the poet takes
in his “Dream” of the singing of birds:
“… for some of them songe lowe
Some high, and all of one accorde”;
and it is certain that this kind of music was a great favorite with the
English people at a very early period, and was indebted to them for many
improvements. The same writer says that the English, in their secular
music and in part-singing, rather preceded than followed the European
nations, and that, though he could find no music in parts, except church
music, in foreign countries before the middle of the XVIth century, yet
in England he found Masses in four, five, and six parts, as well as
secular songs in the vulgar tongue in two or three parts, in the XVth and
early part of the XVIth centuries. Ritson, it is true, in his _Ancient
Songs from the Time of King Henry III. to the Revolution_, disputes
this, but Hawkins is of the same opinion as Burney. Mr. Stafford Smith,
at the end of the last century, made a collection of old English songs
written in score for three or four voices; but though the oldest music
to such songs is scarcely intelligible, the number collected proves how
popular that sort of music was in early times. (Perhaps the illegibility
of the music is due to the old notation, in use before the perfected
stave of four lines became general--the pneumatic notation, supposed by
Coussemaker, Schubiger, Ambros, and other writers on music to have been
developed out of the system of accents of speech represented by signs,
such as are still used in French.)
Landini, an Italian writer of the XVth century, in his _Commentary
on Dante_, speaks of “many most excellent musicians” as coming from
England to Italy to hear and study under Antonio _degli organi_ (a name
denoting his profession); while another writer, the choir-master of the
royal chapel of Ferdinand, King of Naples, mentions the excellence of
the English vocal music in parts, and even (incorrectly) calls John of
Dunstable (a musician of the middle of the XVth century) the “inventor of
counterpoint.”
One of the oldest compositions of this kind is a manuscript score in the
British Museum, a canon in unison for four voices, with the addition
of two more voices for the _pes_, as it is called, which is a kind of
ground, and is the basis of the harmony. The words, partially modernized,
are as follows (they are much older than the music, which is only four
hundred years old):
“Summer is a-coming in,
Loud sing cuckoo;
Groweth seed
And bloweth mead,
And springeth the weed new.
Ewe bleateth after lamb;
Loweth after calf, cow;
Bullock sterteth [leaps],
Buckè verteth [frequents green places],
Merry sing cuckoo;
Nor cease thou ever now.”
Dr. Burney says of this song that the modulation is monotonous, but
that the chief merit lies in “the airy, pastoral correspondence of the
melody with the words”--a merit which many modern compositions of the
“popular” type are very far from possessing. Under the Tudors music made
rapid strides. Dr. Robert Fairfax was well known as a composer in those
days, and a collection of old English songs with their music (often in
parts), made by him, has been preserved to this day. Besides himself,
such writers as Cornyshe, Syr Thomas Phelyppes, Davy, Brown, Banister,
Tudor, Turges, Sheryngham, and William of Newark are represented. Of
these, Cornyshe was the best, and Purcell, two hundred years later,
imitated much of his rondeau style, most of these composers being
entirely secular. Henry VIII. himself wrote music for two Masses, and
had them sung in his chapel; and to be able to take a part in madrigals,
and sing at sight in any piece of concerted music, was reckoned a part
of a gentleman’s education in those days. The invention of printing gave
a great impulse to song-writing and composing, though for some time
after the words were printed the music was probably still copied by hand
over the words; for the printing of notes was of course a further and
subsequent development of the new art. A musician and poet of the name
of Gray became a favorite of Henry VIII. and of the Protector Somerset
“for making certain merry ballades, whereof one chiefly was ‘The hunt is
up--the hunt is up.’”[164]
“A popular species of harmony,” says Ritson, “arose in this reign; it was
called ‘King Henry’s Mirth,’ or ‘Freemen’s Songs,’ that monarch being
a great admirer of vocal music. ‘Freemen’s Songs’ is a corruption of
‘Three-men’s Songs,’ from their being generally for three voices.” Very
few songs were written for one voice.
Ballads were very popular, and formed one of the great attractions at
fairs. An old pamphlet, published in the reign of Elizabeth, mentions
with astonishment that “Out-roaring Dick and Wat Winbars” got twenty
shillings a day by singing at Braintree Fair, in Essex. It does seem
a good deal, considering that the sum was equal to five pounds of
the present money, which again is equivalent to about thirty dollars
currency. These wandering singers, the lowly successors of the proud
minstrels, were in their way quite as successful; but, what is more
wonderful, their songs were for the most part neither coarse nor vulgar.
Good poets wrote for music in those days; _now_, as a general rule, it
is only rhymers who avowedly write that their words may be set to music.
As quack-doctors, fortune-tellers, pedlers, etc., mounted benches and
barrel-heads to harangue the people, and thus gained the now ill-sounding
name of mountebanks, so too did these singers call over their songs and
sing those chosen by their audience; and they are frequently called
by the writers of those times _cantabanchi_, an Italian compound of
_cantare_ (to sing) and _banchi_ (benches). Among the headings given of
these popular songs are the following: “The Three Ravens: a dirge”; “By
a bank as I lay”; “So woe is me, begone”; “Three merry men we be”; “But
now he is dead and gone”; “Now, Robin, lend me thy Bow”; “Bonny Lass
upon a green”; “He is dead and gone, Lady,” etc. There is a quaint grace
and sadness about the titles which speaks well for the manners of those
who listened and applauded. Popular taste has certainly degenerated in
many parts of England; for such titles _now_ would only provoke a sneer
among an average London or Midland county audience of the lower classes.
Gardiner says: “The most ancient of our English songs are of a grave
cast, and commonly written in the key of G minor.”
Among the composers of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. was Birde,
who wrote a still popular canon on the Latin words “Non nobis, Domine,”
and set to music the celebrated song ascribed to Sir Edward Dyer, a
friend of Sir Philip Sidney, “My Mind to me a Kingdom is.”
Birde’s scholar, Morley, produced a great number of canzonets, or short
songs for three or more voices; and Ford, who was an original genius,
published some pieces for four voices, with an accompaniment for lutes
and viols, besides other pieces, especially catches of an humorous
character. George Kirbye was another canzonet composer, and Thomas
Weelkes has been immortalized by the good-fortune which threw him in
Shakspere’s way, so that the latter often wrote words for his music.
Yet doubtless the fame of the one, as that of the other, was chiefly
posthumous; and poet and musician, on a par in those days, may have
starved in company, unknowing that a MS. of theirs would fetch its weight
in gold a hundred years after they were in their graves.
“The musical reputation of England,” says a writer in an old review of
1834, “must mainly rest on the songs in parts of the period between 1560
and 1625.” And Gardiner says: “If we can set up any claim to originality,
it is in our glees and anthems.” The gleemen, who were at first a class
of the minstrels, are supposed to have been the first who performed vocal
music in parts, according to set rules and by notes, though the custom
must have existed long before it was thus technically sanctioned. The
earliest pieces of the kind _upon record_ are by the madrigal writers,
and were, perhaps, founded upon the taste of the Italian school; but
there soon grew up a distinction sufficient to mark English glee-music
as a separate species of the art. It is said that glee-singing did not
become generally popular till about the year 1770, when glees formed
a prominent part of the private concerts of the nobility; but their
being adopted into fashionable circles only at that date is scarcely
a proof of their late origin. The canzonets for three or four voices
must have been closely allied to glees, and a family likeness existed
between these and the madrigals for four or five voices, the ballets, or
fa-las, for five, and the songs for six and seven parts, which are so
prodigally mentioned in a list of works by Morley within the short space
of only four years--1593 to 1597. The number of these songs proves their
wonderful popularity, and we incline to think, with the writer we have
quoted, that the English, in the catches and glees, the works of the
composers of the days of Elizabeth and James I., and those of Purcell,
Tallis, Croft, Bull, Blow, Boyce, etc., at a later period, possess a
music essentially national and original--not imitative, as is the modern
English school, and not more indebted to foreign sources than any other
progressive and liberal art is to the lessons given it by its practisers
in other civilized communities. For if _national_ is to mean isolated
and petrified, by all means let us forswear nationalism.
Shakspere’s songs are scattered throughout his works, and were evidently
written for music. Both old and new composers have set them to music,
and of the latter none so happily as Bishop Weelkes and John Dowland,
his contemporaries and friends; the latter, the composer of Shakspere’s
favorite song (not his own), “Awake, sweet Love,” often wrote music
for his words. In his plays Shakspere has introduced many fragments of
_old_ songs and ballads; but Ritson says of him: “This admirable writer
composed the most beautiful and excellent songs, which no one, so far as
we know, can be said to have done before him, nor has any one excelled
him since.” This statement is qualified by an exception in favor of
Marlowe, a predecessor of Shakspere, and the author of the “Passionate
Shepherd to his Love”; and besides, it means that he was the first great
poet among the song-writers, who, in comparison with him, might be called
mere ballad-mongers. Shakspere’s love for the old, simple, touching music
of his native land, shown on many occasions throughout his works, is most
exquisitely expressed in the following passage from _Twelfth Night_:
“Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song,
That old and antique song we had last night:
Methought it did relieve my passion much,
More than light airs and recollected terms
Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.
…
O fellow, come, the song we had last night.
Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain;
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,[165]
Do use to chant it; it is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age.”
Though Shakspere’s plays were marked with the coarseness of speech
common in his time, and therefore not, as some have thought, chargeable
to him in particular, his songs, on the contrary, are of singular
daintiness. They are too well known to be quoted here, but they breathe
the very spirit of music, being evidently intended to be sung and
popularly known. The chorus, or rather refrain, of one, beginning, “Blow,
blow, thou winter wind,” runs thus:
“Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly;
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
Then heigh ho! the holly!
This life is most jolly!”
The “Serenade to Sylvia” is lovely, chaste and delicate in speech as it
is playful in form; and the fairy song “Over hill, over dale,” is like
the song of a chorus of animated flowers. The description of the cowslips
is very poetic:
“The cowslips tall her pensioners be,
In their gold coats spots you see--
Those be rubies, fairy favors;
In those freckles live their savors.
I must go seek some dew-drops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.”
Bishop Hall, in 1597, published a satirical poem in which he complains
that madrigals and ballads were “sung to the wheel, and sung unto the
pail”--that is, by maids spinning and milking, or fetching water; and
Lord Surrey, in one of his poems, says (not satirically, however):
“My mother’s maids, when they do sit and spin,
They sing a song.”
Now, we gather what was the style of these songs of peasant girls and
laborers from the writings of good old Izaak Walton, who mentions, as a
common occurrence, that he often met, in the fields bordering the river
Lee, a handsome milkmaid who sang like a nightingale, her voice being
good and the ditties fitted for it. “She sang the smooth song which was
made by Kit Marlowe, now at least fifty years ago, and the milkmaid’s
mother sang the answer to it which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in
his younger days.… They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good; I
think much better than that now in fashion in this critical age.”[166] He
wrote in the reign of Charles I., and already deplored the influx of more
pretentious songs; but those he mentions with such commendation were the
famous “Passionate Shepherd to his Love” and the song beginning “If all
the world and love were young,” two exquisite lyrics of an elegance much
above what is now termed the taste of the vulgar.
Izaak Walton was as fond of music as of angling, and quotes many of the
popular songs of his day. He was a quiet man, and only describes the
pastimes of humble life. He used to rest from his labors in an “honest
ale-house” and a “cleanly room,” where he and his fellow-fishermen, and
sometimes the milkmaid, whiled away the evenings by singing ballads and
duets. Any casual dropper-in was expected to take his part; and among the
music mentioned as common in these gatherings are numbers of “ketches,”
or, as we should say, catches. The music of one of his favorite duets,
“Man’s life is but vain, for ’tis subject to pain,” is given in the old
editions of his book. It is simple and pretty; the composer was Mr. H.
Lawes. Other songs, favorites of his, were “Come, shepherds, deck your
heads”; “As at noon Dulcina rested”; “Phillida flouts me”; and that
touching elegy, “Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,” by George
Herbert. This is as full of meaning as it is short:
“Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night
For thou must die.
“Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
“Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My music shows you have your closes
And all must die.
“Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like seasoned timber never gives,
But, when the whole world turns to coal,
Then chiefly lives.”
Sir Henry Wotton’s song for the poor countryman, beginning--
“Fly from our country pastimes, fly,
Sad troops of human misery!
Come, serene looks,
Clear as the crystal brooks,
Or the pure, azured heaven that smiles to see
The rich attendance on our poverty!”
and some verses of Dr. Donne (both these writers being contemporaries
of James I.), are also mentioned by Walton as popular among the lower
classes in his day. Here is another instance of the power of song over
the peasantry in the early part of the XVIIth century. In the spring
of 1613, on the occasion of Queen Anne of Denmark’s return from Bath,
where she had gone for her health, she was met on Salisbury Plain by the
Rev. George Fereby, vicar of some obscure country parish, who entreated
that her majesty would be pleased to listen to a concert performed by
his people. “When the queen signified her assent, there rose out of the
ravine a handsome company, dressed as Druids and as British shepherds
and shepherdesses, who sang a greeting, beginning with these words, to a
melody which greatly pleased the musical taste of her majesty:
“‘Shine, oh! shine, thou sacred star,
On seely[167] shepherd swains!’
We should suppose, from the commencing words, that this poem had
originally been a Nativity hymn pertaining to the ancient church; and
it is possible that the melody might be traced to the same source.…
The music, the voices, and the romantic dresses, so well corresponding
with the mysterious spot where this pastoral concert was stationed,
greatly captivated the imagination of the queen.”[168] Anne of Denmark
admired and patronized the genius of Ben Jonson, the writer of several
musical masques often performed at court by the queen and her noble
attendants. The really classical time of English poetry and music was
before the Commonwealth, and popular music certainly received a blow
during the Puritan rule. Songs and ballads were forbidden as profane;
and in 1656 Cromwell enacted that “if any of the persons commonly called
fiddlers or minstrels shall at any time be taken playing, fiddling,
and making music in any inn, ale-house, or tavern, or shall be taken
proffering themselves, or designing or entreating any to hear them play
or make music in any of the places aforesaid,” they should be “adjudged
and declared to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars.” Fines and
imprisonments were often the penalties attached to a disregard of these
ordinances; but this opposition only turned the course of popular song
into political channels, and it became a point of honor among the
Royalists to listen to, applaud, and protect the veriest scamp who
called himself a minstrel. Songs were written with no poetical merit,
but full of political allusions, bitter taunts and sneers; and it was
the delight of the Cavaliers to sing these doggerel rhymes and make the
wandering fiddlers sing them. Many a brawl owed its origin to this. Even
certain tunes, without any words, were considered as identified with
political principle, and led to dangerous ebullitions of feeling, or
kept alive party prejudices in those who heard them. Popular music has
always been a powerful engine for good or bad, in a political sense.
Half the loyalty of the Jacobites of Scotland in the XVIIIth century
was due to inflammatory songs; Körner’s lyrics fired German patriotism
against Napoleon; and there has never been a party of any kind that did
not speedily adopt some representative melody to fan the ardor of its
adherents.
But if music and poetry were proscribed by the over-rigorous Puritans,
a worse excess was fostered by the immoral reign of Charles II. The
Restoration polluted the stream which the Commonwealth had attempted to
dam up. Just as, in a spirit of bravado and contradiction, the Cavaliers
had ostentatiously made cursing and swearing a badge of their party, to
spite the sanctimoniousness of the Roundheads, so they affected to oppose
to the latter’s psalm-singing roaring and immodest songs. Ritson says
that Charles II. tried his hand at song-writing, and quotes a piece by
him, beginning:
“I pass all my hours in a shady old grove.”
“Though by no means remarkable for poetical merit,” says the critic, “it
has certainly enough for the composition of a king.” Molière was not
more severe on the attempts of Louis XIV. But though the general spirit
of the age was licentious, many good songs were still written. Sedley,
Rochester, Dorset, Sheffield, and others wrote unexceptionable ones,
and the great Dryden flourished in this reign. One of his odes, “On S.
Cecilia’s Day,” is thoroughly musical in its rhythm, the refrains at the
end of each stanza having the ring of some of the old German Minnesongs
of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. But his verses were scarcely simple
or flowing enough to become popular in the widest sense, which honor
rather belonged to the less celebrated poets of his day. Lord Dorset,
for instance, was the author of a sea-song said to have been written the
night before an engagement with the Dutch in 1665, and which, from its
admirable ease, flow, and tenderness, became at once popular with all
classes. The circumstances under which it was supposed to be written had,
no doubt, something to do with its popularity; but Dr. Johnson says:
“Seldom any splendid story is wholly true. I have heard from the late
Earl of Orrery, who was likely to have good hereditary intelligence,
that Lord Dorset had been a week employed upon it, and only retouched
or finished it on the memorable evening. But even this, whatever it
may subtract from his facility, leaves him his courage.” The anonymous
writer to whom we have referred[169] tells us that “the shorter pieces
of most of the poets of the time of Charles II. had a rhythm and cadence
particularly well suited to music. They were, in short, what the Italians
call _cantabile_, or fit to be sung.… In the succeeding reigns, with
the growth of our literature, there was a considerable increase in
song-writing; most of our poets of eminence, and some who had no eminence
except what they obtained in that way, devoting themselves occasionally
to the composition of lyrical pieces. Prior, Rowe, Steele, Philips,
Parnell, Gay, and others contributed a stock which might advantageously
be referred to by the composers of our own times.” Prior was a friend
and _protégé_ of Lord Dorset, who sent him to Cambridge and paid for his
education there. Parnell was an Irishman. His “Hymn to Contentment” is a
sort of counterpart to the old song “My Mind to me a Kingdom is”:
“Lovely, lasting peace, appear;
This world itself, if thou art here,
Is once again with Eden blest,
And man contains it in his breast.”
Gay, the elegant, the humorous, and the pathetic, shows to most advantage
in this group. He it was who wrote the famous ballad “Black-eyed Susan,”
and many others which, though less known at present, are equally
admirable. One of them was afterwards set to music by Handel, and later
on by Jackson of Exeter. But music did not keep pace with poetry; and
though Purcell, Carey, and one or two other composers flourished in the
latter part of the XVIIth and beginning of the XVIIIth centuries, they
kept mostly to sacred music, and the new songs of the day were generally
set to old tunes. Gay’s _Beggar’s Opera_, a collection of seventy-two
songs, could not boast of a single air composed for the purpose. The
music was all old, but the stage, says Dr. Burney, ruined the simplicity
of the old airs, as it invariably does all music adapted to dramatic
purposes. Indeed, we, in our own day, sometimes have the opportunity
of verifying this fact, when old airs or ballads are introduced into
operas to which they are unfitted. The “Last Rose of Summer” put into
the opera of _Martha_ is an instance in point; but, worse than that,
the writer once heard “Home, Sweet Home” sung during the music-lesson
scene in the _Barbier de Seville_. Adelina Patti was the _prima donna_,
and any one who has seen and heard her can imagine the contrast between
the simple, pathetic air and words, and the kittenish, coquettish,
Dresden-china style of the singer! Add to this the costume of a Spanish
_señorita_ and the stage finery of Rosina’s boudoir, not to mention the
absurd anachronism involved in a girl of the XVIIth century singing
Paine’s touching song. Of course the audience applauded vigorously;
for an English audience at the opera goes into action in the spirit of
Nelson’s words, “England expects every man to do his duty,” and the
incongruousness of the scene never troubles its mind.
Carey tried to stem the downfall of really good popular music by writing
both the words and music of the well-known ballad of “Sally in our
Alley,” which attained a popularity (using the word in its proper sense)
that it has never lost and never will lose. The song was soon known
from one end of the country to the other, and, like the old songs, was
“whistled o’er the furrowed land” and “sung to the wheel, and sung unto
the pail.” Addison was no less fond of it than the common people; but the
song was an exception in its time, and the poetry of the day never again
made its way among the great body of the people, as it had done under
the Tudors and the early Stuarts. Music and poetry both grew artificial
under the Hanoverian dynasty, and the mannerisms and affectations of
rhymers and would-be musical critics were sharply satirized by Pope and
Swift. In the reign of Queen Anne the Italian opera was introduced into
London, and the silly rage for foreign music, _because_ it was foreign,
soon worked its way among all classes. Handel brought about the first
salutary return to natural and simple musical expression, and, setting
many national and pastoral pieces to music, diffused the taste for good
music through the intermediate orders of the people, especially the
country gentry, but the masses still clung to interminable ballads,
with monotonous tunes and no individuality either of sense or of form.
Although England could boast of some good native composers and poets in
the XVIIIth century--for instance, among the former, Boyce, Arne, Linley,
Jackson, Shield, Arnold, etc.--still no good music penetrated into the
lower strata of society; for these musicians mostly confined themselves
to pieces of greater pretension than anything which was likely to become
popular. Wales and the North of England still kept up a better standard,
but the general taste of the nation was decidedly vitiated. Dibdin’s
sea-songs broke the spell and reached the heart of the people; but this
was rather a momentary flash than a permanent resurrection of good taste
and discernment. The custom of writing the majority of songs for one
voice, we think, had had much to do with destroying the genuine love of
music among the people. It seemed to shift the burden of entertainment
upon one member of a social gathering, instead of assuming that music
was the welcome occupation and pastime of the greater number; and
besides this, it no doubt fostered an undue rage for melody, or, as it
is vulgarly called, _tune_. We have often had occasion to notice how
bald and meagre--trivial, indeed--a mere thread of melody can sound
when sung by one voice, which, if sung in parts, acquires a majestic
and full tone. The fashion of solo-singing, which obtains so much
in our day, has another disadvantage: it encourages affectation and
self-complacency in the singer. The solo-singer is very apt to arrogate
to him or herself the merit and effect of the piece; to think more of the
individual performance than of the music performed; and to spoil a good
piece by interpolating runs and shakes to show off his or her powers of
vocal gymnastics. All this was impossible in the old part-songs, where
attention and precision were indispensable.
There are hopeful indications at present that England is not utterly
sunk into musical indifference, but, strange to say, wherever the good
leaven _does_ work, it does so from below upwards. The lower classes in
the North of England have mainly given the impulse; the higher are still,
on the whole, superficial in their tastes and trivial and mediocre in
their performances. Even as far back as 1834, the writer in the _Penny
Magazine_ already quoted gives an interesting account of a surprise he
met with at a small village in Sussex. (This, be it remembered, is an
almost exclusively Saxon district of the country.) Being tired of the
solitude of the little inn and the dulness of a country newspaper, he
walked down the street of the village, and, in so doing, was brought to a
pause before a small cottage, nowise distinguished from the other humble
homesteads of the place, from which proceeded sounds of sweet music. The
performance within consisted, not of voices, but of instruments; and
the piece was one of great pathos and beauty, and not devoid of musical
difficulty. When it was finished, and the performers had rested a few
seconds, they executed a German quartet of some pretensions in very
good style. This was followed by variations on a popular air by Stephen
Storace, which they played in excellent time and with considerable
elegance and expression. Several other pieces, chosen with equal good
taste, succeeded this, and the stranger enjoyed a musical treat where
he little expected one. On making inquiries at the inn, he found that
the performers were all young men of the village, humble mechanics and
agricultural laborers, who, for some considerable time, had been in the
habit of meeting at each other’s houses in the evening, and playing
and practising together. The taste had originated with a young man of
the place who had acquired a little knowledge of music at Brighton. He
had taught some of his comrades, and by degrees they had so increased
in number and improved in the art that now, to use the words of the
informant, “there were eight or ten that could play by book and in
public.”
At that time, and in that part of the country, this was an unusual and
remarkable proof of refinement and good taste; but at present, though
still the exception, it is no longer quite so rare to find uneducated
people able to a certain degree to appreciate good music. Much has
been written to vindicate English musical taste within the last thirty
or forty years; but still the fact can scarcely be overlooked that,
notwithstanding all efforts to the contrary, the standard of taste among
the masses is lower than it was in Tudor days.
Every one is familiar with the choral unions, the glee-clubs, the
carol-singing, Leslie’s choir, and Hullah’s methods, which all go far to
raise the taste of the people and enlist the vocal powers of many who
otherwise would have been tempted to leave singing to the “mounseers”
and other “furriners,” as the only thing those benighted individuals
could be good for. There is, as there has been for many generations, the
Chapel Royal, a sort of informal school of music; there is the Academy
of Music; there are “Crystal Palace” and “Monday Popular Concerts”;
musical festivals every year in the various cathedrals, oratorios in
Exeter Hall; and there soon will be a “National School of Music,” which
is to be a climax in musical education, the pride of the representative
bodies of wealthy and noble England (for princes and corporations have
vied with each other in founding scholarships); but with all this, the
palmy days of the Tudors are dead and gone beyond the power of man to
galvanize them into new activity. True, every young woman plays the
pianoforte; you see that instrument in the grocer’s best parlor and the
farmer’s keeping-room; but the sort of music played upon it is trivial
and foreign, an exotic in the life of the performer, a boarding-school
accomplishment, not a labor of love. You can hear “Beautiful Star,” and
“Home, Sweet Home,” and Mozart’s “Agnus Dei” sung one after the other,
with the same expression, the same “strumminess,” the same stolidity,
or the same affected languor, and you will perceive that, though the
singer may _know_ them, she neither feels nor understands them. Moore’s
melodies, too, you hear _ad nauseam_, murdered and slurred over anyhow;
but both the delicacy of the poetry and the pathos of the music are a
dead-letter to the performer. But though a few songs by good writers are
popular in the middle classes--for instance, Tennyson’s “Brook” and “Come
into the garden, Maud,” the immortal and almost unspoilable “Home, Sweet
Home”--yet there is also a dark side to the picture in the prevalence of
comic songs, low, slangy ballads, sham negro melodies (utterly unlike the
real old pathetic plantation-song), and other degrading entertainments
classed under the title of “popular music.” The higher classes give
little countenance or aid to the upward movement in music, and still look
upon the art as an adjunct of fashion. With such disadvantages, it is a
wonder that England has struggled back into the ranks of music-lovers
at all, even though, as yet, she can take but a subordinate place among
them.
PIOUS PICTURES.
A great deterioration having been observable for some time past in
the multitudinous little pictures published in Paris, ostensibly with
a religious object, some of the more thoughtful writers in Catholic
periodicals have on several recent occasions earnestly protested against
the form these representations are taking. Their remonstrances are,
however, as yet unsuccessful. The “article” continues to be produced on
an increasing scale, and is daily transmitted in immense quantities,
not only to the farthest extremities of the territory, but far beyond,
especially to England and America, to ruin taste, sentimentalize piety,
and “give occasion to the enemy to” _deride_ if not to “blaspheme.”
The bishops of France have already turned their attention to this
unhealthy state of things in what may be called pictorial literature
for the pious, and efforts are being made in the higher regions of
ecclesiastical authority to arrest its deterioration. In the synod lately
held at Lyons severe censure was passed on the objectionable treatment
of sacred things so much in vogue in certain quarters; and, still more
recently, Father Matignon, in his conference on “The Artist,” condemned
these “grotesque interpretations of religious truths, which render
them ridiculous in the eyes of unbelievers, and corrupt the taste of
the faithful.” The eloquent preacher at the same time recommended the
Catholic journalists to denounce a species of commerce as ignorant as it
is mercenary, and counselled the members of the priesthood to “declare
unrelenting war against this school of _pettiness_, which is daily
gaining ground in France, and which gives a trivial and vulgar aspect to
things the most sacred.”
This appeal has not been without effect. There appears in the _Monde_,
from the pen of M. Léon Gautier, the author of several pious and learned
works, a Letter “Against Certain Pictures,” addressed “to the president
of the Conference of T----,” in which the absurdity of these silly
compositions is attacked with much spirit and good sense. The _Semaine
Religieuse de Paris_ reproduces this letter, with an entreaty to its
readers to enroll themselves in the crusade therein preached by the
eminent writer--a crusade the opportuneness of which must be only too
evident to every thoughtful and religious mind. M. Léon Gautier writes as
follows:
You have requested me, dear friend, to purchase for you a
“gross” of little pictures for distribution among your poor and
their children.…
As to the selection of these pictures I must own myself
greatly perplexed, and must beg to submit to you very humbly
my difficulties, and not only my difficulties, but also my
distress, and, to say the truth, my indignation. I have before
my eyes at this moment four or five hundred pictures which
have been sold to me as “pious,” but which I consider as in
reality among the most detestable and irreverent of any kind of
merchandise. A great political journal the other day gave to
one of its leaders the title of _L’Ecœurement_.[170] I cannot
give a title to my letter, but, were it possible to do so, I
should choose this one in preference to any other. I am in the
unfortunate state of a man who has swallowed several kilograms
of adulterated honey. I am suffering from an indigestion of
sugar; and what sugar! Whilst in the act of buying these
little horrors, I beheld numberless purchasers succeed each
other with feverish eagerness in the shops, which I will not
specify. Yes, I had the pain of meeting there with Christian
Brothers and with Sisters of Charity, who made me sigh by their
simple avidity and ingenuous delight at the sight of these
frightful little black or rose-colored prints. They bought them
by hundreds, by thousands, by ten thousands; for schools, for
orphanages, for missions. Ah! my dear friend, how many souls
are going to be well treacled in our hapless world! It is the
triumph of confectionery. “Why are you choosing such machines
as these?” I asked of the good Brother Theodore, whom, to my
great astonishment, I found among the purchasers; “they are
disagreeable.” “Agreed.” “They are stupid.” “I know it.” “They
are dear.” “My purse is only too well aware of the fact.” “Then
why do you buy them?” “Because I find that these only are
acceptable.” And thereupon the worthy man told me that he had
the other day distributed among his children pictures taken
from the fine head of our Saviour attributed to Morales--a
_chef-d’œuvre_. The children, however, perceiving that there
was no gilding upon them, had thrown them aside, gaping.
Decidedly, the evil is greater than I had supposed, and it is
time to consider what is to be done.
In spite of all this, I have bought your provision of pictures;
but do not be uneasy--I am keeping them myself, and will
proceed to describe them to you. I do not wish that the taste
of your beloved poor should be vitiated by the sight of these
mawkish designs; but I will take upon myself to analyze them
for your benefit, and then see if you are not very soon as
indignant as myself.
In the first place we have the “symbolical” pictures, and these
are the most numerous of all. I do not want to say too much
against them. You know in what high estimation I hold true
symbolism, and we have many a time exchanged our thoughts on
this admirable form of the activity of the human mind. A symbol
is a comparison between things belonging to the physical and
things belonging to the immaterial world. Now, these two worlds
are in perfect harmony with each other. To each phenomenon of
the moral order there corresponds exactly a phenomenon of the
visible order. If we compare these two facts with each other,
we have a symbol. There is a life, a breath, a whiteness,
which are material. Figurative language is nothing else than a
vast and wonderful symbolism, and you remember the marvellous
things written on this subject by the lamented M. Landriot.
In the supernatural order it is the same, and all Christian
generations have made use of symbolism to express the most
sacred objects of their adoration. There has been the symbolism
of the Catacombs; there has been also that of the Middle Ages.
The two, although not resembling, nevertheless complete, each
other, and eloquently attest the fact that the Christian race
has never been without the use of symbols.
Thus it is not symbolism which I condemn, but this particular
symbolism of which I am about to speak, and which is so
odiously silly. I write to you with the proofs before me. I am
not inventing, but, mirror-wise, merely reflecting. I am not
an author, but a photographer.
Firstly, here we have a ladder, which represents “the way of
the soul towards God.” This is very well, although moderately
ideal; but then who is mounting this ladder? You would never
guess. It is a dove! Yes; the poor bird is painfully climbing
up the rounds as if she were a hen getting back to roost,
and apparently forgetting that she owns a pair of wings. But
we shall find this dove elsewhere; for our pictures are full
of the species, and are in fact a very plentifully-stocked
dove-cote. I perceive down there another animal; it is a
roe with her fawn, and with amazement I read this legend:
“The fecundity of the breast of the roe is the image of the
abundance and sweetness of grace.” Why was the roe selected,
and why roe’s milk? Strange! But here again we have a singular
collection. On a heart crowned with roses is placed a
candlestick (a candlestick on a heart!), and this candelabrum,
price twenty-nine sous, is surmounted by a lighted candle,
around which angels are pressing. This, we are told underneath,
is “good example.” Does it mean that we are to set one for the
blessed angels to follow? Next, what do I see here? A guitar;
and this at the foot of the cross. Let us see what can be the
reason of this mysterious assemblage; the text furnishes it:
_Je me délasserai à l’abri de la Croix_--“I will refresh myself
in the shelter of the cross”--from whence it follows that one
can play the guitar upon Golgotha. Touching emblem! And what do
you say of this other, in which our Saviour Jesus, the Word,
and, as Bossuet says, the Reason and Interior Discourse of
the Eternal Father, is represented as occupied in killing I
know not what little insects on the leaves of a rose-bush? “The
divine Gardener destroys the caterpillars which make havoc in
his garden,” says the legend. I imagine nothing, but merely
transcribe, and for my part would gladly turn insecticide to
this collection of _imagerie_.
This hand issuing out of a cloud I recognize as the hand of my
Lord God, the Creator and Father of all, who is at the same
time their comforter, their stay, and their life. I admit
this symbol, which is ancient and truly Christian; but this
divine hand, which the Middle Ages would most carefully have
guarded against charging with any kind of burden; this hand,
which represents Eternal Justice and Eternal Goodness--can
you imagine what it is here made to hold? [Not even the fiery
bolt which the heathen of old times represented in the grasp
of their Jupiter Tonans, but] a horrible and stupid little
watering-pot, from the spout of which trickles a driblet
of water upon the cup of a lily. Further on I see the said
watering-pot is replaced by a sort of jug, which the Eternal
is emptying upon souls in the shape of doves; and this, the
legend kindly informs me, is “the heavenly dew.” Heavenly
dew trickling out of a jug! And there are individuals who
can imagine and depict a thing like this when the beneficent
Creator daily causes to descend from his beautiful sky those
milliards of little pearly drops which sparkle in the morning
sunshine on the fair mantle of our earth! Water, it must be
owned, is scarcely a successful subject under any form with our
picture-factors. Here is a poor and miserably-painted thread
lifting itself up above a basin, while I am informed underneath
that “the jet of water is the image of the soul lifting itself
towards God by meditation.”
I also need to be enlightened as to how “a river turned aside
from its course is an image of the good use and of the abuse
of grace.” It is obscure, but still it does not vulgarize and
debase a beautiful and Scriptural image, like the next I will
mention, in which, over the motto, “Care of the lamp: image of
the cultivation of grace in our hearts,” we have a servant-maid
taking her great oily scissors and cutting the wick, of which
she scatters the blackened fragments no matter where.
The quantity of ribbon and string used up by these
symbol-manufacturers is something incalculable. Here lines of
string unite all the hearts of the faithful (doves again!)
to the heart of Our Blessed Lady; there Mary herself, the
Immaculate One and our own incomparable Mother, from the height
of heaven holds in leash, by an interminable length of string,
a certain little dove, around the neck of which there hangs a
scapular. This, we are told, means that “Mary is the directress
of the obedient soul.” Elsewhere the string is replaced by
pretty rose-colored or pale-blue ribbons, which have doubtless
a delicious effect to those who can appreciate it. Here is a
young girl walking along cheerfully enough, notwithstanding
that her heart is tied by one of these elegant ribbons to
that of the Blessed Mother of God, apparently without causing
her the slightest inconvenience. Her situation, however, is,
I think, less painful than that of this other young person,
who is occupied in carving her own heart into a shape
resembling that of Mary. Another young female has hoisted this
much-tormented organ (her own) on an easel, and is painting
it after the same pattern. But let us hasten out of this
atelier to breathe the open air among these trees. Alas! we
there find, under the form and features of an effeminate child
of eight years old, “the divine Gardener putting a prop to a
sapling tree,” or “grafting on the wild stock the germ of good
fruits.” This is all pretty well; but what can be said of this
ciborium which has been energetically stuck into a lily, with
the legend, “I seek a pure heart”? These gentlemen, indeed,
treat you to the Most Holy Eucharist with a free-and-easyness
that is by no means fitting or reverent. It is forbidden to the
hands of laics to touch the Sacred Vessels, and it is only just
that the same prohibition should apply to picture-makers. They
are entreated not to handle thus lightly and irreverently that
which is the object of our faith, our hope, and our love.
Hitherto I have refrained from touching upon that very delicate
subject which it is nevertheless necessary that I should
approach--namely, the representation of the Sacred Heart. And
here I feel myself at ease, having beforehand submitted to all
the decisions of the church, and having for long past made it
my great aim to be penetrated with her spirit. Like yourself,
I have a real devotion to the Sacred Heart, nor do I wish to
conceal it. When any devotion takes so wide a development in
the Holy Church, it is because it is willed by God, who watches
unceasingly over her destinies and the forms of worship which
she renders to him. All Catholics are agreed upon this point.
It is true that certain among them regard the Sacred Heart
as the symbol of Divine Love, and that others consider it
under the aspect of a very adorable part of the Body of the
God-Man, and, if I may so express it, as a kind of centralized
Eucharist. Well, I hold that to be accurate one ought to admit
and harmonize the two systems, and therefore I do so. You
are aware that it is my belief that physiology does not yet
sufficiently understand the mechanism of our material heart,
and I await discoveries on that subject which shall establish
the fact of its necessity to our life. The other day, at
Baillère’s, I remained a long time carefully examining a fine
engraving representing the circulation of the blood through the
veins and arteries, and I especially contemplated the heart
the source and receptacle of this double movement, and said
to myself, “The worship of the Sacred Heart will be one day
justified by physiology.” But why do I say this, when it is so
already? Behold me, then, on my knees before the Sacred Heart
of my God, in which I behold at the same time an admirable
symbol and a yet more admirable reality. But is this a reason
for representing the Sacred Heart in a manner alike ridiculous
and odious? I will not here enter upon the question as to
whether it is allowable to represent the Sacred Heart of Jesus
otherwise than in his Sacred Breast, and I only seek to know
in order to accept unhesitatingly whatever with regard to this
may be the thought of the church. But that which to my mind is
utterly revolting is the sight of the profanations of which
these fortieth-rate picture-manufacturers are guilty. What
right have they, and how do they dare, to represent hundreds
of consecrated Hosts issuing from the Sacred Heart, and a
dove pecking at them as they are dropping down? What right
have they to make the Heart of our Lord God a pigeon-house, a
roosting-place for these everlasting doves, or into a vase out
of which they are drinking? What right have they to insert a
little heart (ours) into the Divine Heart of Jesus? What right
have they to represent to us [a Pelion, Ossa, and Olympus on
a small scale] three hearts, the one piled upon the other,
and cascades of blood pouring from the topmost, which is that
of Our Lord; upon the second, which is that of his Blessed
Mother; and thence upon the third, which is our own? What right
have they to make the Sacred Heart shed showers of roses, or
to give its form to their “mystic garden”? Lastly, what right
have they to lodge it in the middle of a full-blown flower, and
make the latter address to it the scented question, “What would
you desire me to do in order that I may be agreeable to you?”
Ye well-meaning picture-makers! beware of asking me the same
question; for both you and I very well know what would be the
answer.
The truth is that these clumsy persons manage to spoil
everything they touch, and they have dishonored the symbolism
of the dove, as they have compromised the representations of
the Sacred Heart. The dove is undoubtedly one of the most
ancient and evangelical of all the Christian symbols; but a
certain discretion is nevertheless necessary in the employment
of this emblem of the Holy Spirit of God. This discretion
never failed our forefathers, who scarcely ever depicted the
dove, except only in the scene of Our Lord’s baptism and in
representations of the Blessed Trinity. In the latter the
Eternal Father, vested in pontifical or imperial robes, holds
between his arms the cross, whereon hangs his Son, while the
Holy Dove passes from the Father to the Son as the eternal love
which unites them. This is well, simple, and even fine. But
there is a vast difference between this and the present abuse
and vulgarization of the dove as an emblem, where it is made
use of to represent the faithful soul. No, truly, one is weary
of all this. Do you see this flight of young pigeons hovering
about with hearts in their beaks? The beaks are very small and
the hearts very large, but you are intended to understand by
this that “fervent souls rise rapidly to great perfection.”
These other doves, lower down, give themselves less trouble and
fatigue; they are quietly pecking into a heart, and I read this
legend: “The heart of Love is inexhaustible; let us go to it in
all our wants.” The pigeon that I see a little farther off is
not without his difficulties; he is carrying a stout stick in
his delicate beak, and--would you believe it?--the explanation
of this remarkable symbol is, “Thy rod and thy staff have
comforted me.” Here again are carrier-pigeons, bringing us in
their beaks nicely-folded letters in charming envelopes. One of
these birds [who possibly may belong to the variety knows as
tumbler pigeons] has evidently fallen into the water; for he is
shown to us standing to recover himself on what appears to be a
heap of mud in the middle of the ocean, with the motto, “Saved!
he is saved!” Next I come upon a party of doves again--always
doves!--whose occupation is certainly no sinecure. Oars have
been fitted to their feeble claws, and these hapless creatures
are rowing. Here is another unfortunate pigeon. She is in
prison with a thick chain fastened to her left foot, and we are
told that she is “reposing on the damp straw of the dungeon.”
Further on appears another of this luckless species, on its
back with its claws in the air. It is dead. So much the better.
It is not I who will encourage it to be so unwise as to return
to life. True, in default of doves, other symbols will not
be found lacking. Here are some of the tender kind--little
souvenirs to be exchanged between friend and friend, wherein
one finds I know not what indescribable conglomerations of
religious sentiment and natural friendship. Flowers, on all
sides flowers: forget-me-nots, pansies, lilies, and underneath
all the treasures of literature: “It is a friend who offers
you these”; “Near or far away, yours ever”; “These will pass;
friendship will remain.” “C’est la fleur de Marie Que je vous
ai choisie.” (N.B.--This last is in verse.)
I know not, my dear friend, whether you feel with me on this
point. While persuading myself that all these playfulnesses are
very innocent, I yet find in them a certain something which
strikes me as interloping, and I do not like mixtures.
We have also the politico-religious pictures. Heaven forbid
that I should speak evil of the _fleurs-de-lys_ which embalmed
with their perfume all the dear Middle Ages to which I have
devoted so much of my life; but we have in these pictures of
which I am speaking mixtures which are, to my mind, detestable,
and I cannot endure this pretty little boat, of which the sails
are covered with _fleurs-de-lys_, its mast is the Pontifical
Cross, and its pilot the Sacred Heart. Is another allusion to
legitimacy intended in this cross surrounded with flowers and
bearing the legend, “My Beloved delights himself among the
lilies”? I cannot tell; but if we let each political party
have free access to our religious picture-stores, we shall see
strange things, and then _Gare aux abeilles!_--“Beware of the
bees.”
One characteristic common to all these wretched picturelings is
their insipidity and petty childishness. They are a literature
of nurses and nursery-maids. The designers must surely belong
to the female portion of humanity; for one is conscious
everywhere of the invisible hand of woman. One is unwilling
to conceive it possible that any one with a beard on the chin
could bring himself to invent similar meagrenesses. These
persons are afraid of man, and have wisely adopted the plan of
never painting him, and of making everybody under the age of
ten years. Never have they had any clear or serious idea of the
Word, the God made man--of him, the mighty and terrible One,
who pronounced anathema on the Pharisees and the sellers in the
Temple. They can but represent a little Jesus in wax, or sugar,
or treacle; and alarmed at the loftiness of Divinity, and being
incapable of hewing his human form in marble, they have kneaded
it in gingerbread.
And yet our greatest present want is manliness. Truly, truly,
in France we have well-nigh no more men! Let us, then, have no
more of these childishnesses, but let us behold in the divine
splendor and perfect manhood of the Word made flesh the eternal
type of regenerated humanity.
SUMMER STORMS.
Summer storms are fleeting things,
Coming soon, and quickly o’er;
Yet their wrath a shadow brings
Where but sunshine dwelt before.
On the grass the pearl-drops lie
Fresh and lovely day appears;
Yet the rainbow’s arch on high
Is but seen through falling tears.
For, though clouds have passed away,
Though the sky be bright again,
Earth still feels the transient sway
Of the heavy summer rain.
Broken flow’rs and scattered leaves
Tell the short-lived tempest’s power;
Something still in nature grieves
At the fierce and sudden shower.
There are in the human breast
Passions wild and deep and strong,
Bearing in their course unblest
Brightest hopes of life along.
O’er the harp of many strings
Often comes a wailing strain,
When the hand of anger flings
Discord ’mid its soft refrain.
Tears may pass, and smiles again
Wreathe the lip and light the brow;
But, like flowers ’neath summer’s rain,
Some bright hope lies crushed and low.
Some heart-idol shattered lies
In the temple’s inner shrine:
Ne’er unveiled to human eyes,
Sacred kept like things divine.
Speak not harshly to the loved
In your holy household band;
Days will come when where they moved
Many a vacant chair will stand.
To the erring--oh, be kind!
Balm give to the weary heart;
Soft words heal the wounded mind,
Bid the tempter’s spell depart.
Let not passion’s storm arise,
Though it pass like summer showers;
Clouds will dim the soul’s pure skies,
Hope will weep o’er broken flowers.
Speak, then, gently; tones of strife
Lightly breathed have lasting power;
Memories that embitter life
Often rise from one rash hour.
THE KING OF METALS
FROM THE FRENCH.
There once lived a widow named Mary Jane, who had a beautiful daughter
called Flora. The widow was a sensible, humble woman; the daughter,
on the contrary, was very haughty. Many young persons desired her in
marriage, but she found none to please her; the greater the number of
her suitors, the more disdainful she became. One night the mother awoke,
and, being unable to compose herself again to sleep, she began to say her
rosary for Flora, whose pride gave her a great deal of disquietude. Flora
was asleep near her, and she smiled in her sleep.
The next day Mary Jane inquired:
“What beautiful dream had you that caused you to smile in your sleep?”
“I dreamed that a great lord conducted me to church in a copper coach,
and gave me a ring composed of precious stones that shone like stars; and
when I entered the church, the people in the church looked only at the
Mother of God and at me.”
“Ah! what a proud dream,” cried the widow, humbly drooping her head.
Flora began to sing. That same day a young peasant of good reputation
asked her to marry him. This offer her mother approved, but Flora said to
him:
“Even were you to seek me in a coach of copper, and wed me with a ring
brilliant as the stars, I would not accept you.”
The following night Mary Jane, being wakeful, began to pray, and, looking
at Flora, saw her smile.
“What dream did you have last night?” she asked Flora.
“I dreamed that a great lord came for me in a coach of silver, gave me a
coronet of gold, and when I entered the church those present were more
occupied in looking at me than at the Mother of God.”
“O poor child!” exclaimed the widow, “what an impious dream. Pray, pray
earnestly that you may be preserved from temptation.”
Flora abruptly left her mother, that she might not hear her remonstrances.
That day a young gentleman came to ask her in marriage. Her mother
regarded this proposal as a great honor, but Flora said to this new
aspirant:
“Were you to seek me in a coach of silver and offer me a coronet of gold,
I would not wed you.”
“Unfortunate girl!” cried Mary Jane, “renounce your pride. Pride leads to
destruction.”
Flora laughed.
The third night the watchful mother saw an extraordinary expression on
her child’s countenance, and she prayed fervently for her.
In the morning Flora told her of her dream.
“I dreamed,” she said, “that a great lord came to seek me in a coach of
gold, gave me a robe of gold, and when I entered the church all there
assembled looked only at me.”
The poor widow wept bitterly. The girl left her to escape seeing her
distress.
That day in the court-yard of the house there stood three equipages,
one of copper, the other of silver, and the third of gold. The first
was drawn by two horses, the second by four, the third by eight. From
the first two descended pages clothed in red, with green caps; from the
third descended a nobleman whose garments were of gold. He asked to marry
Flora. She immediately accepted him, and ran to her chamber to decorate
herself with the golden robe which he presented to her.
The good Mary Jane was sorrowful and anxious, but Flora’s countenance
was radiant with delight. She left her home without asking the maternal
benediction, and entered the church with a haughty air. Her mother
remained on the threshold praying and weeping.
After the ceremony, Flora entered the golden equipage with her husband,
and they departed, followed by the two other equipages.
They drove a long, a very long distance. At last they arrived at a rock
where there was a large entrance like the gate of a city. They entered
through this door, which soon closed with a terrible noise, and they were
in midnight darkness. Flora was trembling with fear, but her husband said:
“Reassure yourself; you will soon see the light.” In truth, from every
side appeared little creatures in red clothes and green caps--the dwarfs
who dwell in the cavities of the mountains. They carried flaming torches,
and advanced to meet their master, the King of Metals.
They ranged themselves around, and escorted him through long valleys and
subterranean forests. But--a very singular thing--all the trees of these
forests were of lead.
At last the cortége reached a magnificent prairie or meadow; in the
midst of this meadow was a château of gold studded with diamonds. “This,”
said the King of Metals, “is your domain.” Flora was much fatigued and
very hungry. The dwarfs prepared dinner, and her husband led her to a
table of gold. But all the meats and all the food presented to her were
of this metal. Flora, not being able to partake of this food, was reduced
to ask humbly for a piece of bread. The waiters brought her bread of
copper, of silver, and of gold. She could not bite either of them. “I
cannot give you,” her husband said, “the bread that you wish; here we
have no other kind of bread.”
The young woman wept, and the king said to her:
“Your tears cannot change your fate. This is the destiny you have
yourself chosen.”
The miserable Flora was compelled to remain in this subterranean abode,
suffering with hunger, through her passion for wealth. Only once a year,
at Easter, she is allowed to ascend for three days to the upper earth,
and then she goes from village to village, begging from door to door a
morsel of bread.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
AN EXPOSITION OF THE CHURCH IN VIEW OF RECENT DIFFICULTIES AND
CONTROVERSIES, AND THE PRESENT NEEDS OF THE AGE. London: Basil
Montagu Pickering, 196 Piccadilly. 1875. New York: THE CATHOLIC
WORLD, April, 1875.
(From _Le Contemporain_.)
I. _Renewed Working of the Holy Spirit in the World._--We are, in a
religious, social, and political point of view, in times of transition
which we are not able to understand, for the same reason that no one
can follow the movements of the battle-field who is in the midst of the
engagement.
To judge from appearances, especially those which are nearest at hand, we
are on the brink of an abyss. The Catholic religion, openly persecuted
in Germany, prostrated now for several years in Italy and Spain by the
suppression of the religious congregations, attacked in all countries,
abandoned by all sovereigns, appears, humanly speaking, to be on the
brink of destruction. There are not wanting prophets who predict the
collapse of Christianity and the end of the world. There are, however,
manly souls who do not allow themselves to be discouraged, and who see
grounds for hope in the very events which fill ordinary hearts with
terror and consternation.
Of this number is an American religious, Father Hecker, who has
just issued a pamphlet in English, wherein, without concealing the
difficulties of the present, he avows his expectation of the approaching
triumph of religion.
His motives are drawn from the deep faith he professes in the action of
the Holy Spirit in the church, outside of which he does not see any real
Christianity. It is the Holy Spirit whom we must first invoke; it is
the Holy Spirit of whom we have need, and who will cure all our ills by
sending us his gifts.
“The age,” he says, “is superficial; it needs the gift of wisdom, which
enables the soul to contemplate truth in its ultimate causes. The age
is materialistic; it needs the gift of intelligence, by the light of
which the intellect penetrates into the essence of things. The age is
captured by a false and one-sided science; it needs the gift of science,
by the light of which is seen each order of truth in its true relations
to other orders and in a divine unity. The age is in disorder, and is
ignorant of the ways to true progress; it needs the gift of counsel,
which teaches how to choose the proper means to attain an object. The age
is impious; it needs the gift of piety, which leads the soul to look up
to God as the heavenly Father, and to adore him with feelings of filial
affection and love. The age is sensual and effeminate; it needs the gift
of force, which imparts to the will the strength to endure the greatest
burdens, and to prosecute the greatest enterprises with ease and heroism.
The age has lost and almost forgotten God; it needs the gift of fear to
bring the soul again to God, and make it feel conscious of its great
responsibility and of its destiny.”
The men to whom these gifts have been accorded are those of whose
services our age has need. A single man with these gifts could do more
than ten thousand who possessed them not. It is to such men, if they
correspond with the graces which have been heaped upon them, that our age
will owe its universal restoration and its universal progress. This being
admitted, since, on the other hand, it is of faith that the Holy Spirit
does not allow the church to err, ought we not now to expect that he will
direct her on to a new path?
Since the XVIth century, the errors of Protestantism, and the attacks
upon the Catholic religion of which it gave the signal, have compelled
the church to change, to a certain extent, the normal orbit of her
movement. Now that she has completed in this direction her line of
defence,[171] it is to be expected that she will resume her primitive
career, and enter on a new phase, by devoting herself to more vigorous
action. It is impossible to dispute the fresh strength which the
definition lately promulgated by the Council of the Vatican has bestowed
upon the church. It is the axis on which now revolves the church’s
career--the renewal of religion in souls, and the entire restoration of
society.
Do we not see an extraordinary divine working in those numerous
pilgrimages to authorized sanctuaries, in those multiplied novenas, and
those new associations of prayer? And do they not give evidence of the
increasing influence of the Holy Spirit on souls?
What matter persecutions? It is they which purify what remains of the too
human in the church. It is by the cross we come to the light--_Per crucem
ad lucem_.
A little farther on the author explains in what the twofold action of the
Holy Spirit consists.
He acts at one and the same time in an intimate manner upon hearts, and
in a manner quite external on the church herself.
An indefinite field of action conceded to the sentiments of the heart,
without a sufficient knowledge of the end and object of the church,
would open the way for illusions, for heresies of every kind, and would
invite an individual mysticism which would be merely one of the forms of
Protestantism.
On the other hand, the exclusive point of view of the external authority
of the church, without a corresponding comprehension of the nature of
the operations of the Holy Spirit within the heart of every one of the
faithful, would make the practice of religion a pure formalism, and would
render obedience servile, and the action of the church sterile.
Moreover, the action of the Holy Spirit made visible in the authority of
the church, and of the Holy Spirit dwelling invisibly in the heart, form
an inseparable synthesis; and he who has not a clear conception of this
double action of the Holy Spirit runs the risk of losing himself in one
or other of the extremes which would involve the destruction and end of
the church.
In the external authority of the church the Holy Spirit acts as the
infallible interpreter and the criterion of the divine revelation. He
acts in the heart as giving divine life and sanctification.
The Holy Spirit, who, by means of the teachings of the church,
communicates divine truth, is the same Spirit which teaches the heart to
receive rightly the divine truth which he deigns to teach. The measure
of our love for the Holy Spirit is the measure of our obedience to
the authority of the church; and the measure of our obedience to the
authority of the church is the measure of our love for the Holy Spirit.
Whence the saying of S. Augustine: _Quantum quisque amat ecclesiam Dei,
tantum habet Spiritum Sanctum_.
It is remarkable that no pope has done so much for the despised rights of
human reason as Pope Pius IX.; that no council has done better service
to science than that of the Vatican, none has better regulated its
relations to the faith; that none has better defined in their fundamental
principles the relations of the natural and the supernatural; and the
work of the pontiff and of the council is not yet finished.
Every apology for Christianity must henceforth make great account of the
intrinsic proofs of religion, without which people of the world would be
more and more drawn to see the church only on her human side.
The Holy Spirit, by means of the sacraments, consummates the union of
the soul of the believer with God. It is this end which true religion
should pursue. The placing in relief the internal life, and the
constitution of the church, and the intelligible side of the mysteries
of the church--in short, the intrinsic reasons of the truths of the
divine revelation combined with the external motive of credibility--will
complete the demonstration of Christianity. Such an exposition of
Christianity, founded on the union of these two categories of proofs,
will have the effect of producing a more enlightened and intense
conviction of religion in the souls of the faithful, and of stimulating
them to more energetic action; and it will have, as its last result,
the opening of the door to their wandering brethren, and gathering them
back into the bosom of the church. With the vigorous co-operation of the
faithful, the ever-augmenting action of the Holy Spirit will raise the
human personality to such an intensity of strength and greatness that
there will result from it a new era for the church and for society--an
admirable era, which it would be difficult to describe in human
expressions, without having recourse to the prophetic language of the
inspired Scriptures.
II. _The Mission of Races._--In pursuing his study upon the action of the
Holy Spirit in the world, the author says that a wider and more explicit
exposition of the dogmatic and moral verities of the church, with a view
to the characteristic gifts of every race, is the means to employ in
order to realize the hopes he has conceived.
God is the author of the different races of men. For known reasons of
his providence, he has impressed on them certain characteristic traits,
and has assigned to them from the beginning the places which they should
occupy in his church.
In a matter in which delicate susceptibilities have to be carefully
handled, it is important not to exaggerate the special gifts of every
race, and, on the other hand, not to depreciate them or exaggerate their
vices.
It would, however, be a serious error, in speaking of the providential
mission of the races, to suppose that they were destined to mark with
their imprint religion, Christianity, or the church. It is, on the
contrary, God who makes the gifts and qualities with which he has endowed
them co-operate in the expression and development of the truths which he
created for them.
Nevertheless, no one can deny the mission of the Latin and Celtic races
throughout the greater part of the history of Christianity. The first
fact which manifested their mission and established the influence they
were to exercise was the establishment of the chair of S. Peter at
Rome, the centre of the Latin race. To Rome appertained the idea of the
administrative and governmental organization of the whole world. Rome was
regarded as the geographical centre of the world.
The Greeks having abandoned the church for schism, and the Saxons having
revolted against her by heresy in the XVIth century, the predominance
which the Latin race, united later on to the Celtic race, assumed in her
bosom, became more and more marked.
This absence of the Greeks and of a considerable part of the
Saxons--nations whose prejudices and tendencies are in many respects
similar--left the ground more free for the church to complete her action,
whether by her ordinary or normal development, or by the way of councils,
as that of Trent and that of the Vatican.
That which characterizes the Latin and Celtic races, according to our
author, is their hierarchical, traditional, and emotional tendencies.
He means, doubtless, by this latter expression, that those races are very
susceptible to sensible impressions--to those which come from without.
As to the hierarchical sentiment of the Celtic and Latin races, it
appears to us that for upwards of a century it has been much weakened, if
it be not completely extinct.
In the following passage the author is not afraid to say of the Saxon
race:
“It is precisely the importance given to the external
constitution and to the accessories of the church which
excited the antipathies of the Saxons, which culminated in
the so-called Reformation. For the Saxon races and the mixed
Saxons, the English and their descendants, predominate in the
rational element, in an energetic individuality, and in great
practical activity in the material order.”
One might have feared, perhaps, a kind of hardihood arising from a
certain national partiality in regard to which the author would find it
difficult to defend himself against his _half-brethren_ of Germany, if he
had not added:
“One of the chief defects of the Saxon mind lay in not fully
understanding the constitution of the church, or sufficiently
appreciating the essential necessity of her external
organization. Hence their misinterpretation of the providential
action of the Latin-Celts, and their charges against the
church of formalism, superstition, and popery. They wrongfully
identified the excesses of those races with the church of God.
They failed to take into sufficient consideration the great
and constant efforts the church had made in her national and
general councils to correct the abuses and extirpate the vices
which formed the staple of their complaints.
“Conscious, also, of a certain feeling of repression of their
natural instincts, while this work of the Latin-Celts was
being perfected, they at the same time felt a great aversion
to the increase of externals in outward worship, and to the
minute regulations in discipline, as well as to the growth of
papal authority and the outward grandeur of the papal court.
The Saxon leaders in heresy of the XVIth century, as well as
those of our own day, cunningly taking advantage of those
antipathies, united with selfish political considerations,
succeeded in making a large number believe that the question
in controversy was not what it really was--a question; namely,
between Christianity and infidelity--but a question between
Romanism and Germanism!
“It is easy to foresee the result of such a false issue; for it
is impossible, humanly speaking, that a religion can maintain
itself among a people when once they are led to believe it
wrongs their natural instincts, is hostile to their national
development, or is unsympathetic with their genius.
“With misunderstandings, weaknesses, and jealousies on both
sides, these, with various other causes, led thousands and
millions of Saxons and Anglo-Saxons to resistance, hatred,
and, finally, open revolt against the authority of the church.
“The same causes which mainly produced the religious rebellion
of the XVIth century are still at work among the Saxons, and
are the exciting motives of their present persecutions against
the church.
“Looking through the distorted medium of their Saxon
prejudices, grown stronger with time, and freshly stimulated by
the recent definition of Papal Infallibility, they have worked
themselves into the belief--seeing the church only on the
outside, as they do--that she is purely a human institution,
grown slowly, by the controlling action of the Latin-Celtic
instincts, through centuries, to the present formidable
proportions. The doctrines, the sacraments, the devotions,
the worship of the Catholic Church, are, for the most part,
from their stand-point, corruptions of Christianity, having
their source in the characteristics of the Latin-Celtic races.
The papal authority, to their sight, is nothing else than the
concentration of the sacerdotal tendencies of these races,
carried to their culminating point by the recent Vatican
definition, which was due, in the main, to the efforts and the
influence exerted by the Jesuits. This despotic ecclesiastical
authority, which commands a superstitious reverence and servile
submission to all its decrees, teaches doctrines inimical to
the autonomy of the German Empire, and has fourteen millions
or more of its subjects under its sway, ready at any moment
to obey, at all hazards, its decisions. What is to hinder
this Ultramontane power from issuing a decree, in a critical
moment, which will disturb the peace and involve, perhaps, the
overthrow of that empire, the fruit of so great sacrifices,
and the realization of the ardent aspirations of the Germanic
races? Is it not a dictate of self-preservation and political
prudence to remove so dangerous an element, and that at all
costs, from the state? Is it not a duty to free so many
millions of our German brethren from this superstitious yoke
and slavish subjection? Has not divine Providence bestowed the
empire of Europe upon the Saxons, and placed us Prussians at
its head, in order to accomplish, with all the means at our
disposal, this great work? Is not this a duty which we owe to
ourselves, to our brother Germans, and, above all, to God? This
supreme effort is our divine mission!”
It would be impossible to enter into the idea of the Bismarckian policy
in a manner more ingenious, more exact, and more striking.
It is by presenting to Germany this monstrous counterfeit of the church
that they have succeeded in provoking its hatred of her, and the new
empire proposes to be itself the resolution of a problem which can be
only formulated thus: “Either adapt Latin Christianity, the Romish
Church, to the Germanic type of character and to the exigences of
the empire, or we will employ all the forces and all the means at
our disposal to stamp out Catholicity within our dominions, and to
exterminate its existence as far as our authority and influence extend.”
This war against the Catholic religion is formidable, and ought not to
leave us without alarm and without terror.
Truth is powerful, it is said, and it will prevail. But truth has no
power of itself, in so far as it is an abstraction. It has none, except
on the condition of coming forth and showing itself living in minds and
hearts.
What is to be done, then?
No thought can be entertained for a moment of modifying Catholic dogmas,
of altering the constitution of the church, or of entering, to ever so
small an extent, on the path of concessions. What is needed is to present
religious truth to minds in such a manner as that they shall be able to
see that it is divine. It is to prove to them that our religion alone
is in harmony with the profoundest instincts of their hearts, and can
alone realize their secret aspirations, which Protestantism has no power
to satisfy. For that, the Holy Spirit must be invoked in order that he
may develop the interior life of the church, and that this development
may be rendered visible to the persecutors themselves, who hitherto see
nothing in her but what is terrestrial and human. Already a certain
ideal conception of Christianity exists amongst non-Catholics of England
and of the United States, and puts them in the way of a more complete
conversion. As to the Saxons, who, in these days, precipitate themselves
upon an opposite course, we should try to enlighten their blindness.
Already we have seen the persecutors, whether Roman or German, become
themselves Christian in their turn. We shall see the Germans of our days
exhibiting the same spectacle. It is a great race, that German race. Now,
“the church is a divine queen, and her aim has always been to win to her
bosom the imperial races. She has never failed to do it, too.”
Already we can perceive a very marked return movement amongst the
demi-Saxons, or Anglo-Saxons. It is a great sign of the times.
At different epochs there have been movements of this kind in England.
But none exhibited features so serious as that of which we are witnesses
in these days. Conversions to the church multiply without number, above
all amongst the most intelligent and influential classes of the nation;
and that in spite of the violent cry of alarm raised by Lord John
Russell, and in spite of the attacks of the ex-minister Gladstone, who
has the reputation of being the most eloquent man in England.
The gravitation towards the Catholic Church exhibits itself in a manner
still more general and more clear in the bosom of the United States.
The Catholics in that country amounted to scarcely a few hundreds at the
commencement of this century. They form now a sixth of the population of
the United States. They number about 7,000,000. And the Catholic is the
only religion which makes any real progress.
It is, then, true “that the Catholic religion flourishes and prospers
wherever human nature has its due liberty. Let them but give to the
church rights only equal to those of other confessions, and freedom of
action, and we should see her regain Europe, and, with Europe, the world.”
Now, might we not conclude that these two demi-Saxon nations, England
and the United States, are predestined by Providence to lead the Saxons
themselves in a vast movement of return towards the Catholic Church?
Before concluding, the author returns to the Latin and Celtic nations,
and directs towards them a sorrowful glance.
As for France, he regrets that a violent reaction against the abuses of
the ancient régime, of which he gives a somewhat exaggerated picture, has
brought about an irreligious revolution and a political situation which
oscillates ceaselessly between anarchy and despotism, and despotism and
anarchy. He deplores still more that the progressive movement has been
diverted from its course in Spain and in Italy by the evil principles
imported from France.
“At this moment,” says the author, “Christianity is in danger, on the one
hand, of being exterminated by the persecution of the Saxon races; on the
other, of being betrayed by the apostasy of the Celto-Latins. This is the
great tribulation of the church at the present time. Between these two
perils she labors painfully.”
According to human probabilities, the divine bark should be on the point
of perishing. But perish it cannot. God cannot abandon the earth to the
spirit of evil. “Jesus Christ came to establish the kingdom of God on the
earth, as a means of conducting men to the kingdom of God in heaven.”
It is thus, in his last chapter, our author surveys the future:
“During the last three centuries, from the nature of the work
the church had to do, the weight of her influence had to be
mainly exerted on the side of restraining human activity.
Her present and future influence, due to the completion
of her external organization, will be exerted on the side
of soliciting increased action. The first was necessarily
repressive and unpopular; the second will be, on the contrary,
expansive and popular. The one excited antagonism; the other
will attract sympathy and cheerful co-operation. The former
restraint was exercised, not against human activity, but
against the exaggeration of that activity. The future will be
the solicitation of the same activity towards its elevation and
divine expansion, enhancing its fruitfulness and glory.
“These different races of Europe and the United States,
constituting the body of the most civilized nations of the
world, united in an intelligent appreciation of the divine
character of the church, with their varied capacities and the
great agencies at their disposal, would be the providential
means of rapidly spreading the light of faith over the whole
world, and of constituting a more Christian state of society.
“In this way would be reached a more perfect realization of
the prediction of the prophets, of the promises and prayers of
Christ, and of the true aspiration of all noble souls.
“This is what the age is calling for, if rightly understood, in
its countless theories and projects of reform.”
The zealous religious who is the author of this important manifesto
traversed the seas in order to submit it to the Holy Father. [A mistake.
Father Hecker went to Europe for other reasons, and took advantage of
the opportunity to submit his pamphlet to the examination of the Roman
censors and other eminent theologians.] If we are well informed, the
Roman Curia found in it neither error nor rashness.[172] It is a complete
plan of action proposed to the apostolate of the church for the future.
The old era would close, a new one would open.
On this ground all ancient differences should disappear. Bitter and
useless recriminations would be laid aside. All would be moving towards
the same future, in accord not only as to the end, but as to the means.
(From _Le Monde_.)
The _Culturkampf_ advances daily. Its war-cry in precipitating itself
upon the church, bent upon her destruction, is: “The doctrine of
infallibility has made spiritual slaves of Catholics, who are thus a
hindrance to civilization.” In presence of so furious an attack, every
voice which suggests means of safety deserves our best attention.
Of this kind is a pamphlet published lately in London, and which has been
already translated into French, German, and Italian, and of which the
journals of different countries, of the most opposite views, have given
very favorable opinions.
The lamented M. Ravelet would, had he been spared, have introduced it
to the readers of the _Monde_; for he had met its author at Rome, and
knew how to appreciate the breadth of his views. Father Hecker, its
author, the founder of the Paulists of New York, is celebrated in his
country for a style of polemics admirably adapted to the genius of his
fellow-countrymen. Does he understand Europe, to which he has made
prolonged visits, equally well? On that point our readers will soon be
able to judge.
How is it that the Catholic religion, which reckons more adherents
than any other Christian religion, does not succeed in making itself
respected? Evidently because many Catholics are not on a level with the
faith which they profess. “We want heroes,” said J. de Maistre at the
beginning of our century. At this moment is not the demand the same?
There is no lack of religious practices; a number of exterior acts of
exterior piety are performed; but the interior life of souls is not
exalted; they seem to be afflicted with a kind of spiritual dyspepsia.
The crises which threaten terrify them, instead of inflaming beforehand
their courage and their confidence in God. It is in the sources of
religion itself we shall find energy; it is to them we must betake
ourselves to reinvigorate our strength, in the direct action of God
upon our consciences, and in the operation of the Holy Spirit upon our
souls. From this source issues the true religious life, and our external
practices are availing only so far as they are inspired by this internal
principle, itself inspired by the Spirit of God. Herein are the primal
verities of Christianity. At every epoch of decadence the voices of
saints remind the world of them; the spirit of the church inclines us to
them; but, distracted by external agitations, we forget to correspond
with its suggestions. We do not possess enough of God! Here is our
weakness. A little more of divinity within us! Lo, the remedy!
Father Hecker has well written upon the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and
upon the men our age wants. Intelligences illuminated from on high,
wills divinely strengthened--is not that what is wanted to maintain the
struggle? Is he not right when he asserts that one soul adorned with
these gifts would do more to promote the kingdom of God than a thousand
deprived of them?
This urgent call to a more intensely spiritual life will touch Christian
hearts. But the pamphlet foresees an objection. Does not this development
of our faculties and of our initiative under the divine influence expose
us to some of the dangers of Protestantism? Do we not run the risk of the
appearance of strong individualities who, filled with their own ideas,
will think themselves more enlightened than the church, and so be seduced
into disobeying her authority?
This eternal question of the relation of liberty to authority! Catholics
say to Protestants: “Liberty without the control of the divine authority
of the church leads insensibly to the destruction of Christianity.”
Protestants reply: “Authority amongst you has stifled liberty. You have
preserved the letter of the dogmas; but spiritual life perishes under
your formalism.” We are not estimating the weight of these reproaches; we
merely state the danger. The solution of the religious problem consists
in avoiding either extreme.
No Catholic is at liberty to doubt that the Holy Spirit acts directly in
the soul of every Christian, and at the same time acts in another way,
indirect, but no less precious, by means of the authority of the church.
Cardinal Manning has written two treatises on this subject, one on the
external, the other on the internal, working of the Holy Spirit. It is
these two workings which Father Hecker endeavors to connect in a lofty
synthesis, and this is the main object of his work.
The first step of the synthesis is the statement that it is one and the
same spirit which works, whether by external authority or by the interior
impulse of the soul, and that these two workings, issuing from a common
principle, must agree in their exercise and blend in their final result.
The liberty of the soul should not dispute the authority of the church,
because that authority is divine; the church, on the other hand, cannot
oppress the liberty of the soul, because that liberty is also divine.
The second step is to prove that the interior action of the Holy Spirit
in the soul alone accomplishes our inward sanctification and our union
with God. The authority of the church, and, generally, the external
observances of religion, having only for their aim to second this
interior action, authority and external practices occupy only a secondary
and subordinate place in the Catholic system, contrary to the notion of
Protestants, who accuse us of sacrificing Jesus Christ to the church,
and of limiting Christianity to her external action. The completion of
the synthesis is in the following: The individual has not received for
his interior life the promise of infallibility; it is to Peter and his
successors--that is to say, to the church--that Jesus Christ has conceded
this privilege. The Christian thus cannot be sure of possessing the Holy
Spirit, excepting in so far as he is in union with the infallible church,
and that union is the certain sign that the union of the two workings of
the Holy Spirit is realized in him.
We have no doubt that this theory is one of the most remarkable
theological and philosophical conceptions of our age. Father Hecker is no
innovator, but he seizes scattered ideas and gathers them into a sheaf of
luminous rays; and this operation, which seems so simple, is the result
of thirty years’ laborious meditation. One must read the pamphlet itself
to appreciate its worth. The more we are versed in the problems which
agitate contemporary religious thought, the better we shall understand
the importance of what it inculcates.
We shall briefly dispose of the application the author makes of his
synthesis. One most ingenious one is that Protestantism, by denying the
authority of the church, obliges her to put forth all her strength in
its defence.
If Luther had attacked liberty, the church would have taken another
attitude, and would have defended with no less energy the free and direct
action of the Holy Spirit in souls. It is this necessary defence of
divine authority which gave birth to the Jesuit order, and which explains
the special spirit which animates that society. If, however, the defence
of assailed authority has been, for three centuries, the principal
preoccupation of the church, she has not on that account neglected the
interior life of souls. It is sufficient to name the spirituality, so
deep and so intense, of S. Philip Neri, S. Francis of Sales, S. John of
the Cross, and S. Teresa. Moreover, does not the support of authority
contribute to the free life of souls by maintaining the infallible
criterion for testing, in cases of doubt, the true inspirations of the
Holy Spirit?
The church, in these days, resembles a nation which marches to its
frontiers to repel the invasion of the foreigner and protect its national
life; its victory secured, it recalls its forces to the centre, to
continue with security and ardor the development of that same life.
According to Father Hecker, the church was in the last extremity of
peril. He sees in the proclamation of the infallibility of the Pope the
completion of the development of authority provoked by the Reformation,
and believes that nothing now remains but its application.
If, since the XVIth century, external action has predominated in the
church, without, however, ever becoming exclusive, so now the internal
working will predominate, always leaving to the external its legitimate
share. Only, this new phase will be, in a way, more normal than the
preceding, because, in religion as in man, the internal infinitely
surpasses the external, without, however, annihilating it, as does
Protestantism. This internal is the essence of Christianity; it is the
kingdom of heaven within us, and whose frontiers it is our duty to
extend. It is the treasure, the hidden pearl, the grain of mustard-seed,
of the Gospel. It is to this interior of the soul that our Lord addressed
the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. The external church--the
priesthood, the worship, the sacraments--are only means divinely
instituted to help the weakness of man to rise to the worship in spirit
and in truth announced by our Saviour to the Samaritan woman. And the
time has come for a fuller expansion of this internal life, for the more
general development of the spirit of S. Francis of Sales and of the other
saints of whom we spoke above.
As to those outside the church, they will never believe in this
evolution, because they suppose that the doctrine of infallibility has
condemned us to a kind of petrifaction. But if they study the actual
situation, events will undeceive them from this present moment.
The persecutions which deprive the church of her temporalities, of her
exterior worship, of her religious edifices, which go the length even of
depriving the faithful of their priests and bishops, which suppress as
far as they can the external part of Catholicity, do they not reveal the
power of its interior?
In the parts of Switzerland and Germany where the populations are robbed
of their clergy and worship, do we not see faith developing in sacrifice,
and piety becoming more serious and fervent in the privation of all
external aid? This example is an additional proof of the opportuneness
of Father Hecker’s pamphlet. If God wills that the persecution should
increase, we must be prepared to do without the external means which he
himself has instituted, and which he accords to us in ordinary times. For
we must not forget that no human power can separate us from God, and that
so long as this union exists religion remains entire as to its substance.
The merit of the Christian is in the intention which inspires his acts.
Religion exists only in the idea which clothes its rites; the sacraments,
the channels of grace, are only effective in us as they are preceded by
the dispositions of our soul. For a religion not to degenerate, it must
perpetually renew the internal life, in order to resist the encroachments
of routine.
Here the author asks what is the polemic best suited to help the people
of these times to escape from their unbelief, which often proceeds from
regarding the church as having fallen into formalism and into a debasing
authoritativism. He believes they might be undeceived by disclosing
to them the inner life of religion and the internal proofs of her
divinity--an idea he shares with the most illustrious writers of our
age. Lacordaire wrote to Mme. Swetchine that he had reversed the point
of view of the controversy in scrutinizing matters from within, which
manifested truth under a new aspect.
Father Hecker quotes in this sense the striking words of Schlegel: “We
shall soon see, I think, an exposition of Christianity appear which will
bring about union among all Christians, and convert the unbelieving
themselves.” Ranke said with no less decision: “This reconciliation
of faith and science will be more important, as regards its spiritual
results, than was the discovery, three centuries ago, of a new
hemisphere, than that of the true system of the universe, or than that of
any other discovery of science, be it what it may.”
The pamphlet ends with a philosophy of race. And here the author, whilst
acknowledging his fear of wounding susceptibilities, expresses the hope
that none of his views will be exaggerated. He inquires what natural
elements the several races have offered to the church in the successive
phases of her history; and, starting from the principle that God has
endowed the races with different aptitudes, he examines in what way those
aptitudes may co-operate in the terrestrial execution of the designs of
Providence. The Latin-Celtic races, who almost alone remained faithful
to the church in the XVIth century, have for authority and external
observances tastes which coincide with the more special development of
the church since that epoch.
On the contrary, the Anglo-Saxon races have subjective and metaphysical
instincts which, in a natural point of view, should attract them to the
church in the new phase on which she is entering. Father Hecker has been
accused with some asperity of predicting that the direction of the church
and of the world will pass into the hands of the Saxon races, whose
conversion, sooner or later, he anticipates. But he does not in any sense
condemn the Latin races to inferiority. He merely gives it as his opinion
that the Latin races can only issue from the present crisis by the
development of that interior life of independent reason and deliberate
volition which constitutes the force of the Saxon races. God has not
given the church to the Latin races. He has not created for nothing the
Saxon, Sclavonic, and other races which cover the surface of the globe.
They have their predestined place in the assembly of all the children of
God, and are called to serve the church according to their providential
aptitudes.
Father Hecker and Dr. Newman are not the only ones who think that the
absence of the Saxon races has been, for some centuries, very prejudicial
to the church. J. de Maistre, whose bias cannot be suspected, expressed
himself even more explicitly to that effect. The Latin genius, under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has been and will continue to be of the
utmost value to the church. Under the divine influence, the Saxon genius
will, in its way, effect equally precious conquests.
In conclusion, we summarize thus the ideas of Father Hecker:
1. We have need of a spiritual awakening.
2. The definition of infallibility has lent such strength to the church
that henceforth personality may become as powerful as possible without
the risk, as in the XVIth century, of injuring unity.
3. This definition having completed the external system of Catholicity,
the initiative of the church proceeds logically to concentrate itself on
the aggrandizement of the interior life, which is the essence of religion.
4. This is proved by the persecutions, which augment and strengthen the
religious life of Catholics.
5. The result of these persecutions will be to unveil to Protestants and
unbelievers the interior view of Catholicity, and to prepare the way for
religious unity.
6. This unity will be effected when Protestants and unbelievers see
that Catholicity, far from being opposed to the aspirations of their
nature, understands them and satisfies them better than Protestantism and
free-thinking.
7. This expansion of Catholicity advances slowly, because it meets few
souls great enough to admit of the full development of its working, and
of showing what it is capable of producing in them.
8. The way to multiply these souls is to place ourselves more and more
under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
Whatever opinion may be formed of certain details, on the whole, this
work manifests a high grade of philosophical thought and theological
insight. But to appreciate it fully it must be read and studied.
Exceptions have been taken to it, on the ground that one meets nothing in
it but theories, without any practical conclusion. Yet what can be more
practical than the exhortation which confronts us on every page, to seek
in all our religious acts, in sacraments, worship, and discipline, the
divine intention involved therein? What more practical than to urge us to
develop all the forces of our nature under the divine influence, and to
tell us that the more conscientious, reasonable, and manly we are, the
more completely men we are, so much the more favorable ground will the
church find within us for her working?
Far from urging any abrupt change, Father Hecker recommends that
everything should be done with prudence, consideration being had for
the manners of every country. He is persuaded that, by placing more
confidence in the divine work in souls, they will become insensibly
stronger, and will increase thus indefinitely the force and energy of
the whole body of the church. Such a future will present us with the
spectacle of the conversion of peoples who at present are bitterly
hostile to her--a future which we shall purchase at the cost of many
sacrifices. But our trials will be full of consolations if we feel
that they are preparing a more general and abundant effusion of divine
illumination upon the earth. _Per crucem ad lucem._
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF LAMB, HAZLITT, AND OTHERS. The
Bric-à-Brac Series. Edited by R. H. Stoddard. New York:
Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1875.
This volume is a compendium of one of those books of memoirs or
personal recollections bequeathed to us by the survivors of the
English Renaissance of the beginning of the century--_My Friends and
Acquaintances_, by P. G. Patmore. This the editor has supplemented, in
the case of Hazlitt, by some letters and reminiscences culled from the
_Memoirs_ published by his grandson, W. Carew Hazlitt. These works,
it might be fairly supposed, would be of themselves light enough
for the most jaded and flippant appetite. However, the aid of the
“editor” is called in--heaven forgive the man who first applied that
title, honored by a Scaliger and a Bentley, to the modern compiler of
scandal!--the most entertaining and doubtfully moral tidbits are picked
out; and the result is the class of books before us, which is doing
for the national intellect what pastry has done for its stomach. The
mutual courtesies--honorable enough when rightly understood--existing
between publishers and the periodical press make honest criticism seem
ungracious; and thus the public judgment is left uninstructed by silence,
or its frivolous tastes are confirmed by careless approval.
The motives impelling the awful scissors of the “editor” not only deprive
the original works which fall under them of the modicum of value they may
possess, but affirmatively they do worse. They give an absolutely false
impression of the persons represented. Thus, in the case before us the
character and genius of Lamb are as ridiculously overrated as his true
merits are obscured; and the same may be said with even more justice
of the portrait given of Hazlitt. Singularly enough, though the editor
derives all he knows, or at least all he presents to the reader, from Mr.
Patmore and Mr. Carew Hazlitt, he speaks in the most contemptuous terms
of both. One he pronounces “not a man of note,” and the other he terms,
with a delightful unconsciousness of self-irony, “a bumptious bookmaker,
profusely addicted to scissors and paste”; and both he bids, at parting,
to “make room for their betters.” If such be the character of Mr. Patmore
and Mr. Hazlitt, what opinion, we may ask, is the reader called upon to
entertain of the “editor” who is an accident of their existence? Nor
is it in relation only to the authors after whom he gleans that the
“editor” shows bad taste and self-sufficiency. The immortal author of the
_Dunciad_, speaking of a kindred race of authors, tells us,
“Glory and gain the industrious tribe provoke,
And gentle Dulness ever loves a joke.”
“The ricketty little papist, Pope,” is the witticism the editor levels at
the brightest and most graceful poet of his age--a master and maker of
our English tongue, and a scourge of just such dunces as himself.
Of the writers whose habits and personal characteristics are treated
of in this volume we have little or no room to speak, nor does the
work before us afford any sufficient basis to go upon. Lamb occupies
a niche in the popular pantheon, as an essayist, higher than posterity
will adjudge him. His essays are pleasing and witty, and the style is
marvellously pure; but they want solidity; they are idealistic, humorous,
subjective; they fail to present that faithful transcript of manners, or
to teach in sober tones those lessons of morality, which make the older
essayists enduring. Lamb’s other works are already forgotten. He was an
amiable man in the midst of unhappy surroundings, and his unassuming
manners have enshrined his name with affection in the works of his
contemporaries.
Hazlitt’s was not a character to be admired, nor in many ways even to be
respected. He was devoured with vanity and grosser passions. His work was
task-work, and therefore not high. ’Tis true Horace tells us,
“… paupertas impulit audar
Ut versus facerem.”
--poverty has often been the sting which urged genius to its grandest
efforts. But Hazlitt, though undoubtedly a man of genius, was not gifted
with that genius of the first order, which abstracts itself wholly from
the miserable circumstances about it. The great body of his work is
criticism, brilliant, entertaining, even instructive at the moment in
which it was produced, but substantially only the fashion of a day.
Of the poet Campbell and Lady Blessington it would be an impertinence to
say anything on the slight foundation this volume gives us.
The editor of the “Bric-à-Brac” Series has placed on the cover of each
volume this motto:
“Infinite riches in a little room.”
We will suggest one that will take up even less room:
“Stultitiam patiuntur opes.”
THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT OF THE STATES, AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By P. Cudmore, Esq.,
Counsellor-at-Law, Author of the _Irish Republic_, etc., etc.
New York: P. Cudmore. 1875.
The author of this work informs us in the preface that his object
has been to condense into one volume the colonial, general, and
constitutional history of the United States. This volume professes to be
a digest of the writings and speeches of the fathers of the Constitution
of the United States, the statutes of the several States, the statutes of
the United States, of the writings and speeches of eminent American and
foreign jurists, the journals and annals of Congress, the _Congressional
Globe_, the general history of the United States, the decisions
of the Supreme Courts of the several States, the opinions of the
attorneys-general of the United States, and the decisions of the Supreme
Court of the United States; of extracts from De Tocqueville, the Madison
Papers, the _Federalist_, Elliott’s _Debates_, the writings of Jefferson,
Adams, Hamilton, and Vattel, and of extracts from Jefferson and other
eminent authors on parliamentary law. The platforms of political parties
are also given. This list is copied _verbatim_ from the author. It will
be seen, therefore, that Mr. Cudmore has set himself no contemptible
task to accomplish, and, as he has executed it in a thin octavo of 254
pages, it may reasonably be conjectured that he possesses a talent
for condensation that Montesquieu might have envied. Mr. Vallandigham
finds a powerful advocate in this author, and his philippics against
Mr. Stanton are proportionately severe. Mr. Cudmore has a fondness for
notes of exclamation; and such is the ardor of constitutionalism with
which he pursues this latter-day “tyrant of the blackest dye” (we quote
Mr. Cudmore) that it often takes three notes of admiration to express
his just abhorrence of his measures. The bulk of the work is taken up
by a civil and military history of the late conflict, and the disputes
that preceded it. If we might venture a hint to Mr. Cudmore, we would
say that his tone is a little too warm for this miserably phlegmatic
age, which affects a fondness for impartiality in great constitutional
writers. The fact is, the questions which the author discusses with the
greatest spirit are dead issues. They still preserve a faint vitality
for the philosopher and speculative statesman, but they have sunk out of
sight for the practical politician and man of to-day. The _vis major_ has
decided them. We might as usefully begin to agitate for a re-enactment of
the Agrarian Laws. Mr. Cudmore’s Chapters IV. and V., containing a digest
of State and Federal law, show much meritorious industry. The history of
land-grants, the homestead law, and the laws pertaining to aliens and
naturalization, will be found useful.
THE YOUNG CATHOLIC’S ILLUSTRATED TABLE-BOOK AND FIRST LESSONS
IN NUMBERS. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9
Warren St. 1875.
This is a very simple and attractive little book, designed to make
the beginning of arithmetic, which certainly is rather a dry study in
itself, interesting and capable of fixing the attention of the very young
children for whose use the work is intended. We do not remember having
seen any prettier or more practical little text-book for beginners, and
cannot recommend it too highly. It is also very nicely illustrated.
SADLIER’S EXCELSIOR GEOGRAPHY, Nos. 1, 2, 3. New York: Wm. H.
Sadlier. 1875.
As a first attempt in this country to prepare a series of geographies
adapted to Catholic schools this is deserving of great praise. The type
is clear, the maps and illustrations, and the mechanical execution
generally, are excellent. It is based, to some extent, on a geographical
course originally known as Monteith’s, and adapted by the insertion
of additional matter interesting to Catholics. What we should have
preferred, and hope eventually to see, is a series of geographies and
histories entirely original, and written from the Catholic point of view,
and pervaded by the Catholic tone which we find in this.
SEVENOAKS: A Story of To-day. By J. G. Holland, author of
_Arthur Bonnicastle_. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1875.
It gives us great pleasure to express, with slight qualifications, our
entire approval of this work, so far as its moral purport is concerned.
Its plot and incidents are all within the range of ordinary life and
experience, and therefore not calculated to foster in the youthful reader
extravagant anticipations in regard to his own future. There are many
good hits at the weaknesses and inconsistencies of human nature, and
faithful pictures of the vices and miseries to which an unscrupulous
ambition leads. Selfishness and injustice prosper for a time, but
eventually reap their reward; while integrity and true manliness, even in
the rude and uncultivated, are recognized and appreciated.
THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ALMANAC FOR 1876. New York: The
Catholic Publication Society.
“Almanac,” when applied to this publication, seems to us a misnomer.
The popular notion of an almanac is a thin, badly-printed pamphlet,
containing incomprehensible astrological tables, delusive prophecies
as to the weather, tradesmen’s advertisements, and a padding of stale
jokes or impracticable recipes gathered from country newspapers; whereas
the _Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac_ is an annual of 144 pages,
containing each year enough solid, well-digested information to furnish
forth an ordinary volume of three hundred pages, to say nothing of the
many fine engravings--and this, too, at a price which should extend its
circulation to equal that of the once-famous _Moore’s Almanac_ (published
in England about the beginning of the XVIIIth century), which is said at
one time to have sold annually more than four hundred thousand copies.
The several volumes of the _Family Almanac_ form a valuable manual for
Catholics, containing, as they do, articles of great interest to the
literary student, the antiquarian, and the archæologist. Much of the
information could be gathered only from exceedingly well-furnished
libraries; some of it appears here for the first time in print.
In the _Almanac_ for 1876, among other good things, we find an extended
and very interesting biographical sketch of His Eminence Cardinal
McCloskey; also, biographical sketches of Cardinals Wiseman and Altieri,
of Bishops Bruté and Baraga, of Rev. Father Nerinckx and the Cura
Hidalgo--the Washington of the Mexican revolution--and of Eugene O’Curry,
the eminent Irish scholar--all of these being illustrated with portraits.
The approaching centenary has not been forgotten, for in “Centennial
Memorials” is shown the part--a glorious one, which received the public
endorsement of the “Father of his Country,” as will be seen by perusal
of the article--taken by Catholics of Irish origin in the Revolutionary
struggle. In the same article are numerous statistics showing the
temporal growth of our country during the century just closing; the
article closes with an account of the wonderful growth of the Catholic
Church during the same period--the whole being valuable for future
reference. “About the Bible” and “The Bible in the Middle Ages” contain
information of interest to every Christian, and which is to be got
elsewhere only by much reading; the latter article also contains an ample
refutation of the old slander that the Catholic Church of the middle
ages kept the Scriptures from the laity. Besides the foregoing, there is
much curious and entertaining prose and verse, and several pictures of
churches and other edifices (among them one of old S. Augustine’s Church,
Philadelphia, destroyed in the riots of 1844, and toward the building of
which, in 1796, Washington contributed $150; Stephen Girard, $40; George
Meade, father of Gen. Meade, $50; and Commodore Barry, $150), a complete
and authentic list of the Roman pontiffs translated from the Italian,
the American hierarchy, and the usual astronomical and church calendars,
postal guide, etc.
MADAME RÉCAMIER AND HER FRIENDS. From the French of Madame
Lenormant. By the translator of Madame Récamier’s _Memoirs_.
Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1875.
This volume will doubtless be welcome to those already familiar with the
_Memoirs_ previously published. The work is largely made up of letters
which are of no particular interest, except so far as they throw light
on the character of the writers. Endowed by nature with extraordinary
beauty, and possessing that knowledge of public events and skill in their
interpretation which seems a special gift of Frenchwomen, Mme. Récamier
became the centre of an admiring group of statesmen and _littérateurs_
who sought the benefit of her intuitive wisdom.
A very strong testimony to Mme. Récamier’s many virtues is found in the
warm friendship which existed between herself and other ladies holding
a similar position in French society; in the loving devotion of the
child of her adoption, who subsequently became her biographer; and--in
the fear and jealousy of the First Napoleon, who paid her the compliment
of a temporary exile. The personal attention she gave to her adopted
daughter’s education is worthy of imitation.
WAYSIDE PENCILLINGS, WITH GLIMPSES OF SACRED SHRINES. By the
Rev. James J. Moriarty, A.M. Albany: Van Benthuysen Printing
House. 1875.
Father Moriarty’s work has one merit on which editors place a high
value--brevity. A book of travels is not properly a history or topography
of the countries visited, and a bird’s-eye view of the most salient
features is all that we can reasonably ask at the traveller’s hand.
The interlarded extracts with which some authors swell their volumes
are often wearisome reading. In the above work the reverend traveller
narrates all the important incidents of his journey, with descriptions of
the various shrines on his route, in so picturesque a manner, and in so
few words, that the reader will have no difficulty in laying up in his
memory many pleasant subjects for reflection.
EIGHT COUSINS; OR, THE AUNT-HILL. By Louisa M. Alcott. Boston:
Roberts Brothers. 1875.
An entertaining volume for youthful readers, and one which conveys many
useful lessons. The same charming freshness which won for _Little Women_
its wide reputation will render this volume a favorite, notwithstanding
its defects--one of which is a spirit of self-assertion in the heroine
which is only too true to nature in the average American girl. However
reluctant we may be to acknowledge the fact, we cannot fail to see
that our so-called progress has had a tendency to weaken veneration
for age and respect for authority. Miss Alcott shows her sympathy with
this fault by sometimes placing age in a ludicrous light before her
juvenile readers. The young people of this generation do not need any
encouragement in the belief that age does not always bring wisdom, and we
the more regret this mistake in a book otherwise commendable. Destroy
the confidence and veneration with which childhood looks up to those
placed over it, and you rob parents of that which constitutes a great
charm in their offspring, and go far to break down the chief bulwark of
society--the family.
MANUAL OF THE SISTERS OF CHARITY. A Collection of Prayers
compiled for the use of the Society of Sisters of Charity in
the Diocese of Louisville, Kentucky. Adapted to general use.
Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co. 1875.
This is a new volume added to the already large devotional literature of
the church. As its title imports, it was prepared especially with a view
to the wants of the daughters of St. Vincent, though adapted to those of
other religious, and of persons in the world. As it bears the imprimatur
of the Archbishop of Baltimore, and has the approval of the Bishop
of Louisville, and, in addition, has had the benefit of Mr. Murphy’s
careful _proofreading_--a matter the importance of which can scarcely be
over-estimated in devotional works--we deem further comment unnecessary.
We would, however, suggest whether the use of a somewhat thinner paper
would not make a better proportioned volume.
MISCELLANEA: Comprising Reviews, Lectures, and Essays on
Historical, Theological, and Miscellaneous Subjects. By M. J.
Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Sixth Edition, revised
and greatly enlarged. 1875.
The publishers have added to the value of this edition by incorporating
in it a number of papers not contained in previous editions, and which
had received the author’s last corrections. Few writers of the present
century in the English language have done more to popularize Catholic
themes and relieve Protestants from the misconceptions which they had
previously entertained regarding the history and doctrines of the church,
than the late Archbishop of Baltimore. Those who have not previously
possessed themselves of his admirable works have a new motive in the
improvements now made.
A FULL COURSE OF INSTRUCTION IN EXPLANATION OF THE CATECHISM.
By Rev. J. Perry. St. Louis: P. Fox. 1875.
The present edition of Perry’s _Instructions_ differs from the original
one in the addition of questions, thus making it a text-book for advanced
classes, whereas its use was heretofore limited in a great measure to
teachers. The editor (Rev. E. M. Hennessey) has also incorporated an
explanation of the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and Papal
Infallibility.
BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.
From P. Donahoe, Boston: Theologia Moralis Novissimi Ecclesiæ
Doctoris, S. Alphonsi, in Compendium Redacta et Usui
Venerabilis Cleri Americani Accommodata, Auctore A. Konings,
C.SS.R. Pars Tertia: Continens tractatus de Sacramentis, de
Censuris, de Irregularitatibus, et de Indulgentiis. 8vo, paper,
pp. x., 433.
From P. O’Shea, New York: Lives of the Saints, with a practical
Instruction on the Life of each Saint for every day in the
year. By F. X. Weninger, D.D., S.J. Part iv., 8vo, pp. 127,
flexible cloth.--Life and Letters of Paul Seigneret, Seminarist
of S. Sulpice, translated from the French by N. R. 12mo, pp.
311.
From the Author: The Sunday Laws: A Discussion of Church and
State, etc. By S. B. McCracken. 8vo, pp. 8, paper.
From P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia: Life of S. Benedict,
surnamed “The Moor.” The Son of a Slave. From the French of M.
Allebert. 18mo, pp. 213.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXII., No. 130.--JANUARY, 1876.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev. I. T.
HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
THE PRESIDENT’S SPEECH AT DES MOINES.
The utterances of any person occupying so lofty a station as that of
President of the United States demand attention and respect, by reason
of the source from whence they emanate. The deliberate judgments of
such a man as President Grant have in themselves a special claim to
the consideration of his fellow-citizens. He has had opportunities to
study the length and breadth of the land. His private convictions have
matured amidst the most varied experience of all classes and sections of
our people--first in a profession affording ample leisure and abundant
means of observation from an independent stand-point, and afterwards
in commercial life, which placed him in the midst of daily events, no
longer as a theorist, but as one actively concerned in their course and
development. His position in military affairs has been that of one of the
most celebrated commanders of the age, and his political career has been
that of an independent statesman, always wielding supreme influence, and
quite beyond the need of vulgar trickery, in order to maintain its power.
Having almost completed an illustrious public life, he is now able to
express the results of his observations, and no one can lightly question
the validity of his conclusions. The country is prepared to receive
anything he may have to say to it, with solicitous, intelligent, and
earnest consideration.
Those who may differ from him in political convictions, or who may retain
a partiality for some of his less successful competitors for the highest
prize of military glory, and even those who go so far as to question his
greatness--all must admit that he is a true American, formed and moulded
by the events in which he has moved, and truly representing the country
and the times.
We are disposed, therefore, to attach the fullest importance to his
words, whether spoken officially or from the convictions of his heart,
and to ponder them respectfully and thoughtfully.
On the 29th of September last His Excellency attended, at Des Moines,
the capital city of Iowa, a convention of the “Army of the Tennessee,”
one of those military organizations composed of veterans of the late war.
The nature of these and kindred associations is not political. Their aim
is to keep up a brotherly spirit among those who formerly stood shoulder
to shoulder on the battle-field. Nevertheless, the gallant men, who thus
risked life and limb for the integrity of the national government, are
supposed to retain their patriotism, and to look with pride and zeal
upon the continuance and healthy growth of those institutions, which are
vitally connected with the nation’s greatness.
In the midst of such an assembly, composed of men of all creeds, our
chief magistrate felt called upon to utter a prophetic warning, which has
excited much comment at home, and has been extensively published abroad.
We print his speech, delivered at the evening session of the “Army of the
Tennessee,” as currently reported in the daily press. President Grant,
being called for, came forward and said:
“COMRADES: It always affords me much gratification to meet
my comrades in arms of ten and fourteen years ago, and to
tell over again from memory the trials and hardships of
those days--of hardships imposed for the preservation and
perpetuation of our free institutions. We believed then, and
we believe now, that we have a government worth fighting for,
and, if need be, dying for. How many of our comrades paid the
latter price for our preserved Union! Let their heroism and
sacrifice be ever green in our memory. Let not the result
of their sacrifices be destroyed. The Union and the free
institutions for which they died should be held more dear for
their sacrifices. We will not deny to any of those who fought
against us any privilege under the government which we claim
for ourselves. On the contrary, we welcome all such who come
forward in good faith to help build up the waste places, and to
perpetuate our institutions against all enemies, as brothers
in full interest with us in a common heritage; but we are not
prepared to apologize for the part we took in the war.
“It is to be hoped that like trials will never again befall
our country. In this sentiment no class of people can more
heartily join than the soldier who submitted to the dangers,
trials, and hardships of the camp and the battle-field,
on whichever side he fought. No class of people are more
interested in guarding against a recurrence of those days. Let
us, then, begin by guarding against every enemy threatening
the prosperity of free republican institutions. I do not
bring into this assemblage politics, certainly not partisan
politics; but it is a fair subject for the soldiers, in their
deliberations, to consider what maybe necessary to secure the
prize for which they battled. In a republic like ours, where
the citizen is the sovereign and the official the servant,
where no power is exercised except by the will of the people,
it is important that the sovereign, the people, should foster
intelligence--that intelligence which is to preserve us as a
free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near
future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing
line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and
intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and
ignorance on the other.
“Now, the centennial year of our national existence, I
believe, is a good time to begin the work of strengthening
the foundations of the structure commenced by our patriotic
forefathers one hundred years ago at Lexington. Let us all
labor to add all needful guarantees for the security of free
thought, free speech, a free press, pure morals, unfettered
religious sentiments, and of equal rights and privileges to all
men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion. Encourage
free schools, and resolve that not one dollar appropriated
for their support shall be appropriated to the support of any
sectarian schools. Resolve that neither the State nor nation,
nor both combined, shall support institutions of learning other
than those sufficient to afford every child growing up in the
land the opportunity of a good common-school education, unmixed
with sectarian, pagan, or atheistical dogmas. Leave the matter
of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private
school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the
church and the state for ever separate. With these safeguards,
I believe the battles which created the Army of the Tennessee
will not have been fought in vain.”
Taking all things into consideration, the speech is fully equal to any
written production of the President. It is direct. It is plain. It is
manly and vigorous, and far superior to any other oration which we
have heard of from the same distinguished quarter. Beyond all things
it expresses, better than many imagine, the common sentiments of the
American people.
We have not been surprised at the general applause with which it has been
greeted; and we think that all our readers will agree in the judgments
which we are about to express with regard to it.
An impression has been spread abroad that the views of President Grant
are hostile to the Catholic Church, and that the speech was fulminated by
his zeal against it. It has been averred that he was talked into making
a public manifestation of his feelings by the mayor of the city of Des
Moines, who called his attention to the political campaign in Ohio,
where Catholics were vainly struggling for equal rights in the matter
of the public schools. His Excellency is said to have been strongly
moved, and hastened home from his ride, in order to prepare his speech
for the evening. We have no means of definitely ascertaining the motives
of the President’s speech. If he meant to hurl a thunderbolt at us, we
honor him for using language, in the main, so just and courteous. But if
his friends have sought to make use of him to stir up feeling against
us, they must be sadly disappointed at his words; for, if they now
repeat them too freely, for the purpose of injuring us, they will find
themselves “hoist by” their “own petard.”
Trying as hard as we can to lash ourselves into fury; trying to fancy
ourselves insulted, by representing to ourselves that the head of this
nation has gone out of his way and abased his dignity, in order to cast
an aspersion at a large and respectable class of the community, we are
forced to give it up, and to lay down our pen; for we find nothing in the
oration with which we are in the least disposed to take issue. On the
contrary, we are prepared to join our tribute to the burst of applause
which echoes through the land. We are convinced that, if it meets with
the attention which it merits, the country at large, and Catholics in
particular, will treasure the “Des Moines speech” among the “Sayings
of the Fathers.” Like Washington’s Farewell, and Webster’s mighty
peroration, and Lincoln’s noble and pathetic Inaugural, it will pass from
the vulgar atmosphere of party strife into the pure and serene empyrean
of immortality.
We have given the speech at length. We now propose to explain our
decision with regard to it, and to examine at greater length those
portions of it which seem to us most true, most wise, and most remarkable.
“ENCOURAGE FREE SCHOOLS,” the President says, “AND RESOLVE THAT NOT ONE
DOLLAR APPROPRIATED FOR THEIR SUPPORT SHALL BE APPROPRIATED FOR THE
SUPPORT OF ANY SECTARIAN SCHOOLS.”
Do we hear aright? Does the President of the United States maintain the
proposition which has brought us so much contempt and derision?
WHAT IS A FREE SCHOOL? A free school is one in which every scholar
can obtain an education without violating the honest convictions of
conscience, or--to use the words of the President--a free school is
one where education can be obtained “unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or
atheistical dogmas.”
ARE OUR SO-CALLED COMMON SCHOOLS FREE? Let us glance at the general
history of the controversy concerning them. As soon as the public
schools had ceased to be purely charitable institutions, a new policy
was inaugurated by our people. The government assumed that it was bound
to ensure an intelligent use of the franchise, by encouraging the mental
activity of its citizens. To this all Catholics agreed, and still agree.
But our Protestant fellow-citizens, rightly desiring that some religious
instruction should be given their children, wrongly insisted upon having
the Bible read in the schools. The government might have permitted such
a custom to continue, when no protest was made against it. But it soon
became evident that the schools were essentially Protestant institutions,
and served as an instrument to prevent the growth of “Popery.” This was
no secret. It was openly preached.
About this time Catholics began to see what everybody else was rejoicing
over, and were, naturally, alarmed. They had assisted to found and build
up the republic, or they had immigrated under the assurance of equal
rights. To find it proclaimed a Protestant country was news to them.
They insisted that the Government was bound to deny this imputation, and
they registered an universal protest against the design of the falsely
so-called “common” schools.
We have demanded either that we be relieved from taxation for these
sectarian schools, or that such arrangement be devised as shall render
them equally desirable for Catholics and non-Catholics.
We were not called upon to explain why we so earnestly desired this. It
was nobody’s business but our own. The public schools are not held to
be eleemosynary institutions. They are ostensibly for the benefit of
all. And even if they were places for the confinement of criminals, or
almshouses, both criminals and paupers have consciences, however dull or
uninformed. What, then, is the objection to our having a right to direct
the policy on which public institutions are to be conducted? None. But if
we were to have taken such a position as this, we should, at once, have
been indicted, for an insidious and damnable conspiracy.
Therefore we have openly stated the grounds of our convictions, relying
on the inherent force of truth to secure our rights. We regard morality
as inseparable from religion. In this we merely echo the sentiments
of the greatest American statesmen, and notably, of the Father of
our republic. We say that, if we are to pay for the education of our
children, we should like to have the worth of our money. What fairer
demand can a Yankee make? We ask nothing to which every citizen has
not a right. We have never met a fair reply to our demands, or a fair
discussion of their merits. First we were greeted with silent scorn.
The practical operation of the laws was found to force our children
into Protestant schools. We proclaimed claimed them to be Protestant
schools. It was unblushingly denied. We put the question to the test, by
endeavoring to stop the Protestant Bible from being read in them. There
was not enough power in our voice, nor enough fairness in our opponents,
to enforce even an appearance of consistency. The schools were pronounced
“un-sectarian,” a Protestant service was daily carried out, and we were
bidden to hold our tongues, and to be thankful. And, now, that we are not
willing, either to hold our peace, or to be grateful to those who deny us
our equal rights, a loud outcry is raised, and every manner of evil is
predicted, unless we are forcibly restrained. The party of malevolence
seeks to create an issue where none exists, and to force us into a
strife, in which it can avail itself of superior numbers to strike us a
cruel and unjust blow. Now, neither this design nor the clamor with which
it is urged, can be defended by any true or just plea. And we venture to
predict that there is too much intelligence and love of fair play in the
American people, to allow it to succeed in its sinister purpose.
What is our position once more? Here we stand, on the same basis with
all other American citizens. Is it not so? Where, then, is any legal
disability proved against us? We ask for nothing which we are not willing
to concede to all our fellow-citizens--viz., the natural right to have
their children brought up according to their parents’ conscientious
convictions. We want, and we will have, our children brought up
Catholics. It can be done in various ways. The state can pay the salaries
of our teachers, and the cost of our buildings, and other expenses,
securing proper guarantees that the money will be honestly laid out, and
the children receive their due amount of secular instruction. Again, the
state may pay a _pro rata_, and allow teachers to compete for scholars.
This is done in Protestant England and Prussia, as well as in Catholic
France and Austria, and is, obviously, most in harmony with democratic
principles. Other ways may be devised which will secure justice to all
parties. There is no practical difficulty, except in the smallest country
school districts. These are always settled by the citizens themselves.
Or, we can educate our children, without the state. The state may let us
alone, and may do away entirely with public education, except for those
who are utterly without means--in other words, change the common schools
into charitable institutions, and let parents provide. But this, we are
persuaded, is full of practical difficulties.
But the plan actually adopted has been to tax all alike for the common
good, and yet maintain a system, which perfectly suits Protestants,
but to which Catholics cannot honestly or conscientiously agree. OUR
SO-CALLED COMMON SCHOOLS ARE NOT FREE. Millions of the people rise up and
proclaim it. Let those who like them send their children to them. Let
those support them who like them by their “private contributions.” Then
all honor to President Grant when he says “that not one dollar should be
appropriated to the support of any sectarian schools.”
The President further says:
“RESOLVE THAT NEITHER STATE NOR NATION, NOR BOTH COMBINED,
SHALL SUPPORT INSTITUTIONS OF LEARNING OTHER THAN THOSE
SUFFICIENT TO AFFORD EVERY CHILD GROWING UP IN THE LAND THE
OPPORTUNITY OF A GOOD COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION, UNMIXED WITH
SECTARIAN, PAGAN, OR ATHEISTICAL DOGMAS.”
Now, what is it that Catholics complain of, except that the state has
supported, and does support, “institutions of learning” mixed “with
sectarian, pagan, and atheistical dogmas”?
There is no doubt about this fact. Protestants insist upon having the
Bible read in the public schools, lest they become irreligious. Catholics
maintain that the version used is garbled, and that, even if it were not,
no one has a right to teach it, except those who have compiled it, and
are to-day the only responsible witnesses to its true meaning. The Jews
maintain that the New Testament part of it is not true. Infidels deny it
altogether. What right has any school board, or any other purely human
institution to decide this controversy; and what right has any man under
the Constitution to enforce his religious views or his denial of religion
upon others? It is an outrage. It is an inconsistency, which cannot be
stated in any terms without transparently manifesting its absurdity.
Under the Constitution, and according to the spirit of our government,
all men are equal. Under the present system of common schools, and,
according to the spirit of those who uphold them, men are not equal, and
there is no such thing as regard for conscience; but every majority has
a right to enforce upon any minority, no matter how large, its peculiar
ideas of instruction, involving, as this always does, the question of
religion itself. We have repeated our protest, until we are almost
sick and tired of hearing the outrage mentioned; we have never seen our
position manfully approached within beat of drum; and, yet, we have
constantly been forced to ask ourselves, “Will the American people never
see this? Can it be that our enemies are, as some of them hold themselves
to be, totally depraved?”
Some time ago, after considerable agitation, the Chicago School Board
prohibited the reading of the Sacred Scriptures in the public schools of
that city.
Undoubtedly the protest of Catholics had something to do with this. But
the action of the board was certainly based upon the idea, that the
reading of the Protestant Bible made the schools Protestant, “sectarian”
institutions, and therefore unjust towards all other religious bodies.
Let it be thoroughly understood, that we fully appreciate the desire of
our Protestant fellow-citizens, to hallow secular instruction. But the
reading of the Scriptures as a public ceremony is as distinctive to them,
as the celebration of Mass would be to Catholics. No one can evade the
argument which forces this conclusion. “Such schemes are glass; the very
sun shines through them.” And yet it is not a little remarkable, how
slowly the light breaks in upon the seat of the delusion.
It is a satisfaction, however, to note the few acknowledgments, tardy and
incomplete as they are, of the principle which we have always maintained.
Prof. Swing, alluding to the action of the Chicago School Board to which
we have referred, gives voice to the following observations of common
sense:
“The government has no more right to teach the Bible than it
has to teach the Koran. My idea is that the government did,
in its earlier life, run according to a sort of Christian
common law; but now the number of Jews, Catholics, and infidels
has become so greatly increased, the government has to base
itself squarely upon its constitutional idea that all men
are religiously equal. Even if the genius of the country
permitted the teaching of the Bible, I should doubt the
propriety of continuing the custom, because no valuable moral
results can ever come from reading a few verses hurriedly in a
school-house, and social strifes will be continually springing
up out of the practice.”
The government, then, according to the professor, has no rights in the
spiritual domain--a proposition which we have been condemned to universal
derision for maintaining, and yet one that is self-evident to any person
who will pause for a moment to consider our institutions.
An ardent advocate of what are called liberal principles, commenting
upon the position of Prof. Swing, very properly styles it the only
one defensible. The purpose of the Liberal League is, unquestionably,
to procure the complete secularization of our public schools, which
would, of course, be as unjust towards Catholic tax-payers as any other
system. This class is no less hostile to justice and true liberty than
any other set of meddlers. Nevertheless, it is not a little amusing
to see the unmistakable fear with which it regards the issue of the
present anti-Catholic policy. It waves, as its flag of hostility to the
Catholics, the threadbare pretext, that we are secretly opposed to all
education. It is not necessary for us to repeat the indignant denial and
protest, with which we have ever met this gratuitous calumny. We quote
from the Boston _Index_ of Oct. 28:
“The public-school system is to-day in the greatest danger,
not so much from the fact that it is openly attacked from
without by the Catholics, as from the fact that a great
inherent injustice to all non-Protestants is made part and
parcel of it by its distinctively Protestant character. What is
built on wrong is built on the sand; and our school system will
certainly fall in ruins by and by, unless it can be grounded on
equal justice to all.”
When the avowed heathen, who reap the fullest harvest, fear for the
destruction of our present unjust system of education, on the ground
that it is too iniquitous to last, is it not time, for people who call
themselves Christians, to give a moment’s heed to the petition, which we
have for years addressed to them, as most advantageous to all of us, and
as doing injustice to none?
It appears, however, that this idea has infiltrated into other minds.
_Zion’s Herald_, a Methodist journal, quoted by the liberal paper to
which we have referred, says:
“The state deals only with temporal affairs, and does not
attempt to usurp spiritual functions. Therefore the objects
and methods of public education are wholly secular, but by no
means necessarily, or at all, immoral or irreligious. On the
contrary, they are decidedly favorable to piety and morality.
But composed denominationally as the American people is, the
state ought not to impart religious education. The moment such
an attempt should be made, the community would be in conflict
as to what form it should take. It may be conceded, without
danger perhaps, that the state should not teach ethics, except
so far as the great fundamental principles of morals and
politics, as to which all Americans are agreed, are concerned.
_The religious education of children may and should be remitted
to the family, the Sabbath-school, and the church_--the natural
and divinely-appointed guardians of religion and ethics.”
In the face of this growing acknowledgment of the “sectarian” character
of our public schools, and knowing that they must give religious
instruction or else be “pagan and atheistical,” we are pleased to hear
the demand that “neither the State nor nation, nor both combined,” shall
support such schools.
The fact is, that a people cannot wholly escape from its national
traditions, without forgetting its language, or undergoing some violent
revolution. If our fellow-citizens will study the meaning of the terms
which they habitually use, they will not lose their traditions of freedom
and equal rights, nor will they throw themselves into a violent, perilous
departure from them. But we hasten to comment upon another sentence,
which is frequently quoted from the President’s oration:
“LEAVE THE MATTER OF RELIGION TO THE FAMILY ALTAR, THE CHURCH, AND THE
PRIVATE SCHOOL SUPPORTED BY PRIVATE CONTRIBUTIONS.”
Precisely so. If it must come to this; if no arrangement can be made, by
which religion and morality can be taught in the public schools, then,
leave the matter to the family altar and the church, and allow it to be
done by private contributions.
In other words, either furnish the people with that which you pretend to
tax them for--viz., a fair and equitable system of public schools--or
allow them to provide for themselves. But, whatever you do, keep your
hands off the sacredness of the “family altar.” Do not set foot into
the hallowed precincts of the domestic sanctuary. The family, though
subordinate, is not to be violated by the state. Parents have rights,
which no government can usurp. You have no more right to force the
education of their children out of their hands, than to define the number
of offspring by law. You have no more right to establish a system, to
which you will endeavor to secure their conformity by violent measures,
than you have to establish public wet-nurseries, or, require that voters
shall be brought up on government pap and be fed out of a government
spoon.
Keep from meddling with religion; you have no authority to teach it.
What a bitter rebuke these words of the President contain for that party,
small and contemptible in itself, but powerful by reason of the times,
which has ever sought to widen the gulf between us and our true-hearted
countrymen! It is not enough that we should be estranged by the
traditions of three hundred years. It is not enough to whisper into the
popular ear every stale and loathed calumny. It is not enough to bring
our holiest rites and beliefs into the obscene literature now circulating
amongst the depraved youth of our country. It is not enough to drown with
a thousand noisy, insolent tongues, every attempt we make at explanation.
It is not enough for this malignant, persecuting power to drop its poison
into every crevice of our social and religious system, from the parlor
to the sewer, from the temple to the lupanar; but the nation must be
organized against us. Our religion must, in some way or other, be dragged
into politics. For shame! we cry, with the President. In a country of
such varied religious beliefs as ours, there is but one way to order and
peace--“KEEP THE CHURCH AND THE STATE FOR EVER SEPARATE.”
To sum up: We agree with the President:
1st. No “sectarianism” in our common schools; and, therefore, “not one
dollar” to our present system of schools, because they are sectarian.
2d. “Not one dollar” to “pagan” schools, in which God is ignored.
3d. “Not one dollar” to “atheistical” schools, in which God is denied in
the name of “science falsely so-called.”
We now turn to consider the prophecy in which the President warns the
American people of its future dangers:
“IF WE ARE TO HAVE ANOTHER CONTEST IN THE NEAR FUTURE OF OUR
NATIONAL EXISTENCE, I PREDICT THAT THE DIVIDING LINE WILL NOT
BE MASON AND DIXON’S, BUT BETWEEN PATRIOTISM AND INTELLIGENCE
ON THE ONE SIDE, AND SUPERSTITION, AMBITION, AND IGNORANCE ON
THE OTHER.”
What is meant by superstition?
Formerly it meant seeking for power or knowledge, by dealing with the
impure spirits.
Does the President mean to warn us against the delusions and uncleanness
of modern spiritism? If so, we are agreed.
But we do not really suppose that the President means any such thing.
What does he mean?
We find in the dictionary four other meanings of the word which he has
used. Superstition means “an excessive reverence or fear of that which
is unknown or mysterious.” But, we observe no such phenomenon among
our people; if anything, rather the reverse. Or it means “The worship
of false gods.” We see no signs of this except in the “Joss Houses”
of San Francisco. Nor do we behold any great belief “in the agency of
superior powers in certain extraordinary or singular events, or in
omens, or prognostics.” Nor, further, do we behold any “excessive nicety
or scrupulous exactness,” as an alarming feature of our present moral
condition. There remains but one meaning (and this, we are persuaded,
is the sense which the President intended to convey): “Especially, an
ignorant or irrational worship of the supreme Deity.”
An ignorant worship of God is one which knows not what to believe
concerning him, or one which is unable to state what it does believe;
or, further, one which can give no conclusive reason for believing
anything. But, outside the Catholic Church, there is no religious body
which can tell precisely what it ought to believe, or precisely what it
does believe, or precisely why it ought to believe anything. Again, an
irrational belief in God is one which recognizes his existence, and, at
the same time, denies his attributes. For instance, it is an irrational
belief in God, which denies his wisdom; which asserts, that he has not
chosen means adequate to accomplish his ends; which represents him, when
he has made a revelation to man, as leaving his divine truth in scattered
and mysterious writings in an obscure language, requiring men to find
them, collect them, and believe their true meaning in order to be saved;
or which fancies that reading daily a few pages from these writings, to
little children, will be sufficient to prepare them for the duties of
life. It is an irrational belief in God which represents him as immoral,
as creating man simply to damn him, or, which denies his justice, by
wickedly imagining that he will not punish oppression and calumny and
those who sow discord in the midst of a free and happy people.
Here again we agree with the President in denouncing such impiety, and
in predicting that, if the liberties and institutions of this republic
are soon to be jeopardized, it will be by irreverence towards God and
the contempt of charity and justice towards men, ever practised by this
“ignorant and irrational worship of the supreme Deity.”
Another item of danger which the President foresees in the near future
is “ignorance.” Here, again we find him sounding the note of warning, to
which we have always given voice. His Excellency says: “In a republic
like ours, … where no power is exercised except by the will of the
people, it is important that the sovereign, the people, should foster
intelligence--that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free
nation.” The liberties of this republic will not be maintained, we say,
by an ignorant, debauched, and corrupted generation. Our common people
must be educated. They must possess “that intelligence which is to
preserve us as a free nation.” They must know something more than simply
how to read and write and “cipher.” Nor will it be sufficient, to add
to this a knowledge of music. They must have a sound and thorough moral
training. Their conscientious convictions must be grounded on truth daily
taught and daily enforced. They must be daily taught to control their
passions; they must be taught honesty, and be required to give back that
which is unjustly gotten. They must be taught the true purpose of life.
But this training, as the President affirms, belongs not to the state,
but to the “family altar and the church.” Either assist _all_ families
and _all_ churches, or else encourage them to help themselves. These are
our sentiments. But when sectarian bigotry has gotten hold of a system of
the falsely so-called “common schools,” and with obstinate purpose, and
clamorous intensity and ever-swelling declamation, manifests its resolve
to maintain this system, even though it conflicts with the conscientious
rights of millions of the people of our country; when, further, it is
determined to force a large minority to accept this state of things,
or to go without instruction, we, as American citizens, denounce the
system as tyrannous; in the full sense of the word, as a reckless and
immoral oppression. We assert that those who uphold it, do not desire
intelligence, but prefer ignorance; that their aim is not to promote
knowledge, but to destroy the religious convictions of our children, and
to keep us from growing in the land. We affirm that such self-delusion
originates in ignorance, is perpetuated by ignorance, tends to still
deeper degradation of ignorance; and we predict that it will bring forth
the fruits of ignorance, not only in morality, but in the lower sciences.
We, for our part, will never relax our efforts to show up the dishonesty
of this party; we will never withdraw our protest, until justice has been
done; and knowing to what lengths men can go when they start without
principle, we fully share in the alarm of our chief magistrate, as to the
danger of “ignorance.” Have we not, therefore, reason to hope that, in
the midst of the struggle, which his sagacious mind perceives to be at
hand, we shall find him on the side of patriotism and intelligence, with
all true Americans, against that “superstition” and “ignorance,” whose
aim is to destroy the “security of unfettered religious sentiments and
equal rights” of his fellow-citizens?
There is another item of the future contest, which, according to our
President, is
“AMBITION.” WHAT IS AMBITION?
A man has been elected to the highest office in the gift of a free
people, the limits of which have been fixed by a custom handed down by
the fathers of the nation, and which, to the minds of true patriots,
has the force of law. When such a trust does not satisfy the honored
recipient, and he, yielding to personal motives, strains every nerve,
and seeks by every means at his command, to break down all barriers to
continuation of power, thereby abusing the dignity of his post and the
confidence of the people--that is ambition.
We do not fully share the apprehension with which the President foresees
this threat to the “near future” of our national welfare. But if it be
true, we fully agree with him when he says: “Now, the centennial year of
our national existence, I believe, is a good time to begin the work of
strengthening the foundations of the structure commenced by our patriotic
forefathers one hundred years ago at Lexington.”
“Language,” according to a great diplomatist, “was given to man, in order
that he might conceal his ideas.” But this maxim has never been accepted
by honorable men. In examining, thus briefly, the “Des Moines speech,”
we have followed that other canon of criticism, which requires that
words shall be interpreted in their literal sense, as far as possible.
Submitted to this just criticism, the language appears to us immortal,
and worthy of the high place which is even now being prepared for it.
Some may marvel, and may wonder how the President came to be filled with
so high a degree of the prophetic spirit. Like Balaam, the son of Beor,
he was expected to curse us; unlike Balaam, he was not stayed, but rather
urged on by the faithful servant with whom he previously conversed. But
there is no mystery about it. He has grown up with the instincts of a
true American, and he has spoken accordingly. Not only are the words
on which we have commented true, but they are in accordance with sound
Catholic principles. We are ready to take him at his word, and his
words in their true meaning. To those who will join us we say, without
disguise or reserve: “Gentlemen, you will never regret having trusted
us, and dealt fairly with us, according to the laws and Constitution of
this country.” We believe with the President, that, if the only honest
meaning of his language be as honestly carried out, “the battles which
created the Army of the Tennessee” (which, by the way, a Catholic general
once commanded and in whose ranks hundreds of Catholic hearts bled)--we
believe, we say, that these battles “will not have been fought in vain.”
The children of the soldiers of the Union will at least be the peers of
those whom their fathers overcame. The nations’ heroes will not look
down, to see their heirs defrauded of equal rights in “the Union and the
free institutions for which they died.” The President will yield to his
comrades in arms, at least as much as he is so ready to accord to his
late opponents. And as for our countrymen throughout the Union, we are
prepared to wait, trusting that when fully enlightened, they will agree
to our obtaining, independently of all political agitations or party
organizations, our just and equal rights as American citizens.
SONNETS IN MEMORY OF THE LATE SIR AUBREY DE VERE, BART.
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
I.
To-night upon thy roof the snows are lying;
The Christmas snows lie heavy on thy trees;
A dying dirge that soothes the year in dying
Swells from thy woodlands on the midnight breeze.
Our loss is ancient; many a heart is sighing
This hour a late one, or by slow degrees
Heals some old wound, to God’s high grace replying--
A time there was when thou wert like to these!
Where art thou? In what unimagined sphere
Liv’st thou, sojourner, or a transient guest?
By whom companioned? Access hath she near,
In life thy nearest, and beloved the best?
What memory hast thou of thy loved ones here?
Hangs the great Vision o’er thy place of rest?
II.
“Sweet-sounding bells, blithe summoners to prayer!”[173]
The answer man can yield not ye bestow:
Your answer is a little Infant, bare,
Wafted to earth on night-winds whispering low.
Blow him to Bethlehem, airs angelic, blow!
There doth the Mother-Maid his couch prepare:
His harbor is her bosom: drop him there
Soft as a snow-flake on a bank of snow.
Sole Hope of man! Sole Hope for us--for thee!
“To us a Prince is given; a Child is born!”--
Thou sang’st of Bethlehem, and of Calvary,
The Maid immaculate, and the twisted thorn
Where’er thou art, not far, not far is He
Whose banner whitens in yon Christmas morn!
A MESSAGE.
Is there anything more tantalizing than to be caught with a toothache
and swelled face just at Christmas time, when one’s hands are full of
work that must be finished, of plans that have been begun in time and
carried on prosperously to within a few days of their fulfilment? This
is just what befell Mr. Stephen Walpole on the 20th of December in the
year of grace 1870. You remember what a terrific winter that was? How the
bleak north wind blew over ice and snow, and added tenfold horrors to the
poor soldiers fighting in that terrible Franco-German war--how all our
hearts shuddered in pity for them, as we sat stitching and knitting in
their service by the glow of our Christmas fires! This 20th of December
was, perhaps, the bitterest day of the whole season. The snow was deep
on the ground, the ice hung in long spikes from rails and roofs, and the
east wind blew cruelly over all. Stephen Walpole ought to have been out
breasting it, but, instead of this, he sat at home moaning, in a voice
that sounded like a fog-bell at sea, through poultices, wadding, and
miles of flannel that swelled his head out of all human proportions.
“To think of a man being knocked down by a thing no bigger than a pin’s
point!” he grumbled. “A prick of that miserable atom one calls a nerve
turns the seat of one’s intellect into a monster calf’s head, and makes
one a spectacle to gods and men. I could whip myself for being such a
milksop as to knock under to it. I’d rather have every tooth in my head
pulled out than play the woman like this.… Och! Whew!”
“Serves you right, sir, for your impertinence!” protested Nelly Walpole,
bridling up and applying a fresh hot poultice to her brother’s cheek,
which she bade him hold; but Stephen, in his manly inability to bear the
toothache with composure, dropped the soft mess under a sudden sting that
jerked it out of his hand.
“What an unmanageable baby it is!” cried Nelly, catching the poultice in
time to save her pretty violet cashmere dress. “I told you to hold your
cheek while I fastened the bandage; make haste now before it cools.”
“O my unfortunate brother! Ill-fated man! Is this how I find you, bound
and poulticed in the hands of the Philistines?”
This was from Marmaduke, Nelly’s younger brother, who entered while
the operation was going on, and stood surveying the victim in serene
compassion.
“Yes,” cried Stephen, “and all the pity a poor devil gets is being
bullied for not holding his jaw.”
“Oh! come, you’re not so bad, since there’s vice enough in you for a
pun!” said Marmaduke. “How did you catch the thing?”
“What thing--the pun?”
“The toothache.”
“It caught me,” said Stephen resentfully.
“Then it caught you in some of those villanous cut-throat places where
you go pottering after beggars and blackguards and the Lord knows what!”
said Marmaduke with airy contempt, drawing his slim, beringed fingers
gracefully through a mass of remarkably fine curls that clustered over
his high, white forehead, and gave a boyish look to his handsome young
face, and added to its attractions. He was extremely prepossessing,
this perfumed, patent-leather-booted young gentleman of two-and-twenty.
You could not look at him without liking him. His eye was as clear as a
child’s, his smile as frank, his laughter as joyous and catching. Yet,
as it sometimes happens with the graces of childhood, these things were
a deceptive promise. The frankness and the joy were genuine; but there
was a cold gleam of contempt, a cold ring of selfishness, in the bright
eyes and the merry voice that were very disappointing when you found
them out. But people were slow to find them out. Even those who lived
with Marmaduke, and thus had ample opportunities of judging, remained
under the spell of his attractive manners and personal charms until some
accident revealed their worthlessness. A false coin will go on passing
current through many hands, until one day some one drops it to the
ground, and the glittering sham is betrayed. He had not a bad heart; he
was kind even, when he could be brought to forget himself for a moment
and think of others. But it required a shock to do this; and shocks are,
happily, rare in every-day life. So Marmaduke slept on undisturbed in
his egotism, hardening unconsciously in self-absorbed enjoyment. He had
never taken trouble about anything, made a genuine effort of any sort
except for his amusement. He had just the kind of brains to enable him
to get through college with a decent amount of success easily--tact,
ready repartee, a quick, retentive memory that gave the maximum of result
for the minimum of work. He would pass for clever and well informed where
an awkward, ugly youth, who had ten times his intellect and studied ten
times harder, would pass for knowing nothing. Stephen was eight years
older than he, and had not yet discovered his brother’s real value.
Perhaps this arose partly from Stephen’s not being of a particularly
observant or analytical turn of mind. He took people pretty much at their
own valuation, as the world is rather apt to do. Marmaduke set a very
high price on his handsome face and limited attainments, and his brother
had never dreamed of disputing it. He would sometimes naïvely express his
surprise that people were so fond of Duke when he did so little to please
them; and wonder how popular he was, considering that he never gave
himself the smallest trouble to oblige or humor people.
“I suppose it’s his handsome face that mankind, and womankind in
particular, find so taking,” Stephen would remark to Nelly. “He certainly
has a wonderful knack for getting on with people without caring twopence
whether they like him or not. I wish I knew his secret. Perhaps it’s his
high spirits.”
Nelly would sometimes suggest that Marmaduke’s fine temper might count
for something in the mystery. And Stephen never contradicted her. His
temper was not his best point. He had a heart of gold; he had energy,
patience, and endurance to any extent--except in case of toothache; he
was unselfish and generous; but he was sensitive and exacting. Like
most persons who dispense liberally, he was impatient of the selfishness
and ingratitude of men who take all they can get and return nothing.
Marmaduke had no such accounts to square with human beings, so he never
felt aggrieved, never quarrelled with them. Stephen was working hard
at his profession--he was an engineer--and so far he had achieved but
moderate success. Marmaduke had been called to the bar, but it was a
mere formality so far; he spent his time dawdling about town, retailing
gossip and reading poetry, waiting for briefs that never came--that
never do come to handsome young gentlemen who take it so easy. His elder
brother laid no blame on him for this want of success. He was busy all
day himself, and took for granted that Marmaduke was busy on his side.
The law was up-hill work, besides; the cleverest and most industrious men
grew gray in its service before they made a name for themselves; and Duke
was after all but a boy--he had time enough before him. So Stephen argued
in his brotherly indulgence, in ignorance of the real state of things.
Nelly was, as yet, the only person who had found out Marmaduke, who knew
him thoroughly. She knew him egotistical to the core, averse to work,
to effort of every sort, idle, self-indulgent, extravagant; and the
knowledge of all this afforded much anxious thought to her little head
of nineteen years. They lived alone, these three. Nelly was a mother to
the two young men, watching and caring for them with that instinctive
child-motherhood that is so touching in young girls sometimes. She was a
spirited, elfin little creature, very pretty, blessed with the sweetest
of tempers, the shrewdest of common sense, and an energy of character
that nothing daunted and few things resisted. Marmaduke described this
trait of Nelly’s in brother-like fashion as “a will of her own.” He
knew his was no match for it, and, with a tact which made one of his
best weapons of defence, he contrived to avoid clashing with it. This
was not all policy. He loved his pretty sister, and admired her more
than anything in the world except himself. And yet he knew that this
admiration was not mutual; that Nelly knew him thoroughly, saw through
him as if he were glass; but he was not afraid of her. His elder brother
was duped by him; but he would have staked his life on it that Nelly
would never undeceive him; that she would let Stephen go on believing
in him so long as the deceiver himself did not tear off the mask. Yet
it was a source of bitter anxiety to the wise little mother-maiden to
watch Marmy drifting on in this life of indolence and vacuity. Where was
it to end? Where do such lives always end? Nothing but some terrible
shock could awake him from it. And where was the shock to come from?
Nelly never preached--she was far too sensible for that--but when the
opportunity presented itself she would say a few brief words to the
culprit in an earnest way that never irritated him, if they worked no
better result. He would admit with exasperating good-humor that he was
a good-for-nothing dog; that he was unworthy of such a perfection of a
sister and such an irreproachable elder brother; but that, as nature had
so blessed him, he meant to take advantage of the privilege of leaving
the care of his perfection to them.
“If I were alone on my own hook, Nell, I would work like a galley-slave,”
he protested once to her gentle upbraiding. “But as it is, why need I
bother myself? You will save my soul, and pray me high and dry into
heaven; and Stephen--Stephen the admirable, the unimpeachable, the pink
of respectability--will keep me out of mischief in this.”
“I don’t believe in vicarious salvation for this world or the next, and
neither do you, Marmy. You are much too intelligent to believe in any
such absurdity,” replied Nelly, handing him a glove she had been sewing a
button into.
Marmaduke did not contradict her, but, whistling an air from the
_Trovatore_, arranged his hat becomingly, a little to one side, and, with
a farewell look in the glass over the mantel-piece, sauntered out for his
morning constitutional in the park. Nelly went to the window, and watched
the lithe young figure, with its elastic step, until it disappeared.
She was conscious of a stronger solicitude about Marmaduke this morning
than she had ever felt before. It was like a presentiment. Yet there
was nothing that she knew of to justify it. He had not taken to more
irregular hours, nor more extravagant habits, nor done anything to cause
her fresh anxiety; still, her heart beat as under some new and sudden
fear. Perhaps it was the ring of false logic in his argument that sounded
a louder note of alarm and warned her of worse danger than she had
suspected. One might fear everything for a man starting in life with the
deliberate purpose of shifting his responsibility on to another, setting
his conscience to sleep because he had two brave, wakeful ones watching
at his side.
“If something would but come and wake him up to see the monstrous folly,
the sinfulness, of it!” sighed Nelly. “But nothing short of a miracle
could do that, I believe. He might, indeed, fall ill and be brought to
death’s door; he might break his leg and be a cripple for life, and that
might serve the purpose; but oh! dear, I’m not brave enough to wish for
so severe a remedy.”
Two months had passed since this little incident between the brother and
sister, and nothing had occurred to vindicate Nelly’s gloomy forebodings.
Marmaduke rose late, read the newspaper, then Tennyson, Lamartine, or
the last novel, made an elaborate toilet, and sauntered down to the
courts to keep a lookout for the coming briefs. But it was near Christmas
now, and this serious and even tenor of life had been of late broken
in upon by the getting up of private theatricals in company with some
bachelor friends. What between learning his own part, and hearing his
fellow-actors and actresses theirs, and overseeing stage arrangements,
Marmaduke had a hard time of it. His hands were full; he was less at home
than usual, seldom or never of an evening. He had come in very late some
nights, and looked worn and out of spirits, Nelly thought, when he came
down to his late breakfast.
“I wish those theatricals were over, Marmy. They will kill you if they
last much longer,” she said, with a tender, anxious look on her pretty
little face. This was the day he came home and found Stephen in the hands
of the Philistines.
“’Tis hard work enough,” assented the young man, stretching out his long
limbs wearily; “but the 26th will soon be here. It will be too bad if you
are laid up and can’t come and applaud me, Steevy,” he added, considering
his elder brother’s huge head, that looked as if it would take a month to
regain its natural shape.
“Humph! That’s the least of my troubles!” boomed Stephen through his
poultice.
“Civil! Eh, Nell? I can tell you it’s as bad as any toothache, the
labor I’ve had with the business--those lazy dogs, Travers and Milford,
throwing all the weight of it on me, under pretext of never having done
that sort of thing before.”
“That’s always the fate of the willing horse,” said Stephen, without
the faintest idea of being sarcastic. “That’s just what I complain of
with those idle fellows X---- and W----; they throw the burden of all
the business on me, because, forsooth, I understand things better! I do
understand that people can’t get work done unless they bestir themselves
and attend to it.”
“I wouldn’t be such an ass as to let myself be put on in that way,” said
Marmaduke resentfully. “I would not be fooled into doing the work of
three people instead of one.”
“And yet that’s what you are doing at present,” replied Stephen.
“Oh! that’s different; it is only _en passant_,” explained Marmaduke;
“and then, you see, it.…”
“Amuses you,” Nelly had it on the tip of her tongue to say; but she
checked herself, and finished the sentence for him with, “It is not the
same thing; people cannot make terms for a division of labor, except it
be in the case of real business.”
“Of course not,” assented Stephen. Marmaduke looked at his boots, and
inwardly voted Nelly “no end of a trump.”
Did she guess this mental vote, and did she take advantage of it to ask
him a favor?
“Perhaps Marmy would go and see that poor man for you, Stephen?” she said
in the most natural way possible, without looking up from her work.
“I wish he would; I should be ever so much obliged to him. Would you mind
it, Duke?”
“Mind what?”
“Taking a message for me to a poor fellow that I wanted badly to go and
see to-day.”
“Who is he? Where does he hang out?”
“His name is John Baines, and he hangs out in Red Pepper Lane, ten
minutes from here, at the back of the square.”
“Some abominable slum, no doubt.”
“The locality is not Berkeley Square or Piccadilly, but it would not kill
you to walk through it once,” rejoined Stephen.
“Do go, there’s a dear boy!” coaxed Nelly, fixing her bright eyes on
Marmaduke’s face, with a smile that would have fascinated a gorilla.
Marmaduke rose, stretched his arms, as if to brace himself for an effort.
“Who’s your friend John Baines?” he said. “A ticket-of-leave man?”
“Nothing so interesting; he’s only a rag-and-bone man.”
Marmaduke said nothing, but his nose uttered such an unmistakable
_pshaw!_ that Nelly, in spite of herself, burst out laughing.
“What the deuce can make him cultivate such company?” he exclaimed,
appealing to Nelly, and joining good-humoredly in her merriment.
“To help them and do them good; what else?” she replied.
“Every man to his taste; I confess I have none for evangelizing
rag-and-bone men, or indeed men of any station, kind, or degree,”
observed Marmaduke emphatically.
“Then you won’t go?” said Stephen.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t. I don’t mind devoting myself for once to oblige
you. What’s your message for John Baines? Not a leg of mutton or a bottle
of port? I won’t bargain for carrying that sort of article.”
“I don’t want you to carry anything that will encumber you,” replied
the elder brother. “Tell him I cannot get to see him to-day, and why,
and that I am very sorry for it. Meantime, you can say I have done his
commission. See if he wants anything, and, if so I will send it at once.”
“What ails him?” enquired Marmaduke with a sudden look of alarm.
“Poverty: hunger, and cold, and misery.”
“Oh! that’s all! I mean it’s not a case of typhus or small-pox. I should
not care to imperil my valuable life by running in the way of that sort
of thing,” observed Marmaduke.
“Have no fear. The complaint is not catching,” replied his brother.
“Whatever good he may do you, he’ll do you no harm.”
“Dear Marmy! it’s very good of you!” whispered Nelly, as she tripped
down-stairs after the reluctant messenger, and helped him on with his fur
coat in the hall.
“It’s not a bit good; it’s an infernal bore, and I’m only doing it to
please you, Nell,” protested Marmaduke. “What a fool’s errand it is! I
sha’n’t know from Adam what to say to the man when I get there. _What_ am
I to say to him?”
“Oh! anything,” suggested Nelly. “Say you have come to see him because
Stephen is ill, and ask him how he is. You’re never at a loss for
something to say, you know that right well; and whatever you say is sure
to be right.”
“When I know who I’m talking to; but I don’t know this interesting party,
or what topics of conversation he particularly affects. He won’t expect
me to preach him a sermon, eh?” And Marmaduke faced round with a look of
such comical terror at the thought that Nelly again burst out laughing.
“Heaven forbid! That’s the last thing you need dream of,” she cried. “He
is much more likely to preach to you.”
“Oh! indeed; but I didn’t bargain for that. I would very much rather be
excused,” protested Marmaduke, anything but reassured.
“You foolish boy! I mean that he will preach to you as the poor always
do--by example; by their patience, and their gratitude for the least
thing one does for them.”
“I’m not going to do anything for John Baines that I can see; only
bothering him with a visit which he would very likely rather I spared
him.”
“You will give him Stephen’s message,” suggested Nelly, “and then let him
talk. There is nothing poor people enjoy so much as a good listener. They
are quite happy when they can pour out their grievances into a willing
ear. The sympathy of the rich is often a greater comfort to the poor than
their alms.”
“Humph! That’s lucky, anyhow,” grunted Marmaduke. “Well, I’ll let the
old gentleman have his head; I’ll listen till he pulls up of his own
accord.” He had his hand on the door-latch, when Stephen’s muffled tones
were heard calling from the room above. Nelly bounded up the stairs, and
was back in an instant.
“He says you are to give Baines half a sovereign from him; he had nearly
forgotten it.”
“Where is it?” said Marmaduke, holding out his hand.
“Stephen has not his purse about him, so he begs you will give it for
him.”
“Neither have I mine,” said the young man.
“Well, run up for it; or shall I? Where is it?” inquired willing Nelly.
Marmaduke hesitated for a moment, and then said abruptly: “It doesn’t
matter where it is; there’s nothing in it.”
“What have you done with your money? You had plenty a few days ago!”
exclaimed Nelly in childlike surprise.
“I have lost it; I haven’t a brass farthing in the world!” He said this
in a reckless, dogged sort of way, as if he did not care who knew it; and
yet he spoke in an undertone. For one moment Nelly looked at him in blank
astonishment.
“Lost it?” she repeated, and then, the truth flashing on her suddenly,
she cried in a frightened whisper: “O Marmaduke! you have not been
gambling? Oh! tell me it’s not true.” She caught hold of his arm, and,
clinging to it, looked into his face, scared and white.
“Nonsense, Nell! I thought you were a girl of sense,” he exclaimed
pettishly, disengaging himself and pushing back the bolt. “Let me be
off; tell Stephen I had not change, so his friend must wait till he can
go and tip him himself.”
“No, no; he may be hungry, poor man. Stay, I think I have ten shillings
here,” said Nelly; and she pulled out her porte-monnaie, and picked four
half-crowns from the promiscuous heap of smaller coins. “Take these; I
will tell Stephen you will give the ten shillings.”
Her hand trembled as she dropped the money into Marmaduke’s pocket. He
was about to resist; but there was something peremptory, a touch of that
will of her own, in her manner that deterred him.
“I’m sorry I said anything about it; I should not if I thought you would
have minded it so much,” he observed.
“Minded it? O Marmaduke! Minded your taking to gambling?”
“Tush! Don’t talk nonsense! A man isn’t a gambler because once in a way
he loses a twenty-pound note.”
And with this he brushed past her, and closed the hall-door with a loud
bang.
Nelly did not sit down on one of the hall chairs and cry. She felt
mightily inclined to do so; but she struggled against the weakness and
overcame it. Walking quietly up the stairs, she hummed a few bars of a
favorite air as she passed the door of Stephen’s sitting-room, and went
on to her own room on the story above. But even here, safe and alone,
the tears were bravely held back. She would not cry; she would not be
seen with red eyes that would betray her brother; she would do her very
utmost to rescue him, to screen him even now. While she is wrestling and
pleading in the silence of her own room, let us follow the gambler to Red
Pepper Lane.
Marmaduke had described the place accurately when he called it an
abominable slum. Red Pepper Lane was one of those dismal, frightful dens
of darkness and dirt that cower at the back of so many of our wealthy
squares and streets--poison-pits for breeding typhus and every social
plague that desolates great cities. The houses were so high and the lane
so narrow that you could at a stretch have shaken hands across from
window to window. There was a rope slung half-way down the alley, with
a lantern hanging from it which looked more like a decoration or a sign
than a possible luminary; for the glass was too thickly crusted with dirt
to admit of the strongest light piercing it. In the middle of the lane
was a gutter, in which a few ragged, begrimed, and hungry-looking little
mortals were playing in the dirty snow. The east wind whistled through
the dreary tenements with a sharp, pitiless cry; the sky was bright
outside, but here in Red Pepper Lane its brightness did not penetrate.
Nothing but the wind could enter, and that came with all its might,
through the crannies in the walls, through the rickety doors, through
the window-frames glazed with brown paper or battered old hats--any
rag that could be spared to stuff the empty panes. Not a head was seen
anywhere protruding from windows or doors; the fierce blast kept every
one within who had a roof to cover them. If it were not for the sooty
little objects disporting themselves in the gutter, the lane might have
been the precincts of the jail, so deserted and silent was it. Marmaduke
might have wandered up and down for an hour without meeting any one whom
he could ask to direct him to where John Baines lived, but luckily he
recognized the house at once by Stephen’s signal of an old broom nailed
over the door. He searched for a knocker or a bell; but seeing neither,
he sounded a loud rat-ta-ta-tat with the gold knob of his walking-stick,
and presently a voice called out from somewhere to “lift the latch!”
He did so, and, again left to his own devices, he followed Stephen’s
injunctions and went straight up to the second story, where he knocked,
and in obedience to a sharp “Come in!” entered.
The gloom of the lane had prepared him gradually for the deeper gloom
of the room, and he at once distinguished a person, whom he rightly
surmised to be the rag-and-bone man, sitting at the farther end, near
the fire-place, wrapped up in a brown blanket, with his feet resting
on the hearth-stone, as if he were toasting them. If he was, it was in
imagination; for there was no fire--only the ghost of one as visible in
a mass of gray ashes, and they did not look as if even a glow of the
late warmth remained in them. He had his back to the door, and, when
it opened, he turned his head in that direction, but not sufficiently
to see who came in. Marmaduke, as he stood on the threshold, took in
the surroundings at a glance. There was a bed on the floor in one
corner, with no bed-clothes to speak of, the blanket being just now in
requisition as a cloak; a miserable-looking table and two chairs--an
unoccupied one and the one Baines sat in; a bag and a basket were flung
under the window, and some dingy old utensils--a saucepan, kettle,
etc.--lay about. There was nothing particularly dreadful in the scene;
it was, compared with many such, rather a cheerful one on the whole; but
Marmaduke, who had no experience of the dwellings of the poor, thought
it the most appalling picture of misery and desolation that could be
conceived. He was roused from the stupor of horror into which the sudden
spectacle had thrown him by hearing the figure in the blanket ask rather
sharply a second time “Who’s there?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Marmaduke, advancing within a step of the
chair. “My name is Walpole; I have come to see if there is anything I can
do for you--anything that you … that …” he stammered, not knowing how to
put it.
“Oh! Mr. Walpole, I am obliged to you for calling, sir. I want nothing;
but I am glad to see you. It is very kind of you. Pray take a chair. You
must excuse me for not getting up; my leg is still very painful.”
“I am only the brother of the Mr. Walpole whom you know,” said Marmaduke,
surprised beyond measure at the good address of the man. “My brother is
laid up with a violent face-ache. He was greatly put out at not being
able to keep his appointment with you this afternoon, and sent me to see
how you were getting on, and to tell you he had done something that you
commissioned him to do.”
“Your brother is extremely kind,” said the man. “I am sorry to hear he is
ill. This weather is trying to everybody.”
“You seem to be a severe sufferer from it,” remarked Marmaduke. He had
opened his fur coat, and sat back in the rickety chair, in mortal fear
all the while that it would go to smash under him. This was the most
extraordinary specimen of the rag-and-bone tribe--he could not say that
he had ever known, for he had never known one in his life, but--that
he could have imagined. He spoke like an educated man, and, even in
his blanket, he had the bearing of a gentleman. If it were not for his
swollen nose and the glare of his red eye-balls, which were decidedly not
refined, there was nothing in his appearance to indicate that he belonged
to the very dregs of human society. It was impossible to say how old he
was, but you saw at a glance that he was more broken than aged.
“Yes, I am suffering rather severely just now,” he replied in a quiet,
conversational way; “I always do when the cold sets in. But, added to my
chronic complaint of sciatica, I slipped on the ice some time ago, and
sprained my left foot badly. Your brother made my acquaintance at the
hospital where I was taken to have it set right.”
“And has it been set right?”
“Yes; I can’t get about easily yet, but it will be all right by and by.”
And then, dismissing the selfish subject, he said: “I am distressed, sir,
that you should have had the trouble of coming to such a place as this;
pray don’t let me detain you longer.”
“I’m in no hurry,” replied Marmaduke, whose interest and curiosity were
more and more excited. “Is there nothing I can do for you? It’s dismal
work sitting here all day with a sprained ankle, and having nothing to
do; would you care to have some books?” It did not occur to him to ask
if he knew how to read; he would as soon have inquired if he knew how to
speak.
Baines looked at him with a curious expression.
“I don’t look like a man to lend books to, do I?” he said. “There’s not
much in common between books and a rag-and-bone man.”
“Quite as much, I should say, as there is between some men and rags and
bones,” retorted Marmaduke, meeting the man’s eyes with a responsive
question in his own.
Baines turned away with a short laugh. Perhaps it was mere accident
or the force of habit that made him look up at the space over the
mantel-piece; but there was something in the deliberate glance that made
Marmaduke follow it, and, doing so, he saw a faded but originally good
engraving of Shakspere hung in a frame against the wall. Repressing the
low whistle which rose involuntarily to his lips, he said, looking at the
portrait:
“You have a likeness of Shakspere, I see. Have you read his plays?”
“Ay, and acted them!”
“Acted them! You were originally on the stage, then? I saw at once that
you were not what you seem to me,” said Marmaduke, with that frankness
that seemed so full of sympathy and was so misleading, though never less
so, perhaps, than at this moment. “Would it be disagreeable to you to
tell me through what chapters of ill-luck or other vicissitudes you came
to be in the position where I now see you?”
The man was silent for a few minutes; whether he was too deeply offended
to reply at once, or whether he was glancing over the past which the
question evoked, it was impossible to say. Marmaduke fancied he was
offended, and, vexed with himself for having questioned him, he stood up,
and laying Nelly’s four half-crowns on the chimney-piece, “I beg your
pardon if I seemed impertinent; I assure you I did not mean it,” he said.
“I felt interested in you, and curious to know something more of you; but
I had no right to put questions. Good-morning.” He made a step towards
the door, but Baines, rousing himself, arrested him by a sign.
“I am not offended,” he said. “I saw quite well what made you ask it. You
would have every right to catechise me if I had come to you for help; as
it is, your kindness and your brother’s makes a claim which I am in no
mind to dispute. If you don’t mind shivering in this cold place for half
an hour, pray sit down, and I will tell you my story. I have not a cigar
to offer you,” he added with a laugh, “but perhaps you don’t affect that
vice?”
“I do indeed very considerably,” said Marmaduke, and, pulling out a
handsome cigar-case, he handed it to Baines, and invited him to help
himself; the rag-man hesitated just for a moment, and then, yielding to
the instinct of his good-breeding, took one.
“It’s not an amusing story,” he began, when they had sent up a few warm
puffs from their fragrant weeds, “but it may not be uninteresting to you.
You are very young; would it be rude to ask how young?”
“Two-and-twenty next week, if I live so long,” replied Marmaduke.
“Humph! I was just that age when I took the fatal turn in the road that
led to the honorable career in which I am now embarked. My father was an
officer in the line. He had no fortune to speak of; a couple of thousand
pounds left him by an aunt was all the capital he possessed. When he was
still young, he married, and got three thousand pounds with his wife. I
was their only child. My father died when I was ten years old, and left
me to the sole care of my mother, who made an idol of me and spoiled me
to my heart’s content. I was not a bad boy, I had no evil propensities,
and I was not deficient in brains. I picked up things with little or no
effort, and got on better at school than many who had twice the brains
and four times the industry. I was passionately fond of poetry, learned
pages of Byron and Shelley by heart, and declaimed with a good deal of
power. There could not have been a greater curse than such a gift to
a boy of my temperament and circumstances. When I left school, I went
to Oxford. My poor mother strained every nerve to give me a university
education, with a view to my becoming a barrister; but instead of
repaying her sacrifices by working hard, I spent the greater part of my
time acting. I became infatuated about Shakspere, and took to private
theatricals with a frenzy of enthusiasm. As ill-luck would have it, I
fell in with a set of fellows who were drama-mad like myself. I had one
great chum named Hallam, who was stark mad about it, and encouraged me
in the folly to the utmost. I soon became a leading star in this line.
I was sought for and asked out by everybody in the place, until my head
got completely turned, and I fancied I had only to walk on to the stage
to take Macready’s place and achieve fame and fortune. The first thing
that roused me from the absurd delusion was seeing Charles Kean in
Macbeth. I felt utterly annihilated under the superiority of his acting;
it showed me in an instant the difference there is between ordinary taste
and talent and the divine afflatus of genius. And yet an old friend who
happened to meet me in the theatre that night assured me that the younger
Kean was not a patch upon his father, and that Macready outshone the
elder Kean. I went back to Oxford a crestfallen man, and for a time took
refuge from my disappointment in real work. I studied hard, and, when
the term came for going up for my degree, I was confident of success. It
was a vain confidence, of course. I had only given myself to study for
a period of two months or so, and it would have been little short of a
miracle if I had passed. My mother was terribly disappointed; the sight
of her tears cut me up more than the failure on my own account, and I
determined to succeed or die in the effort, if she consented to let me
make one more. She did consent, and I succeeded. That was the happiest
day of my life, I think.” He drew a long breath, and repeated in an
undertone, as if he forgot Marmaduke’s presence, and were speaking aloud
to himself: “Yes, the happiest day of my life!”
“You worked very hard to pull up for lost time!” observed Marmaduke.
“Lost time! Yes, that was it--lost time!” said Baines, musing; then
he continued in his former tone: “My poor mother was very happy. She
declared I had repaid her amply for all her sacrifices. She saw me
already at the top of my profession, a Q.C., a judge, the chief of all
the judges, seated in robes on the woolsack. I came home, and was in due
time called to the bar. I was then just twenty-four. We lived in a pretty
house on the road to Putney; but my mother thought it now desirable
to move into London, that I might have an office in some central
neighborhood, where my clients would flow in and out conveniently. I
remember that I strongly opposed the plan, not from dislike, but from
some feeling like a presentiment, a dread, that London would be a
dangerous place for me, and that I was taking the road to ruin by leaving
the shelter of our secluded home, with its garden and trees, away from
a thousand temptations that beset a young man in the great city. But
my mother’s heart was set on it. She was convinced my character had
thoroughly changed, that I had broken off for ever from old habits and
old propensities, and that I was strong enough to encounter any amount
of temptation without risk. Poor mother! It was no fault of hers if she
was blinded by love. The fault was all mine. I fed her with false hopes,
and then I betrayed them. She gave in so far to my wishes as to consent
only to let the house, instead of selling it, as she first intended; so
that our removal to London took the appearance more of an essay than a
permanent arrangement. I was thankful for this, and set about the change
in high spirits. We were soon comfortably settled in a very small house
in Wimpole Street. I found it rather like a bird-cage after our airy,
roomy abode in the suburbs; but it was very snug, and my mother, who had
wonderful taste, soon made it bright and pretty. She was the brightest
and prettiest thing in it herself; people used to take her for my elder
sister when she took me to parties of an evening. I was very proud of
her, and with better reason than she was of me.”
He paused again, looking up at the Shakspere print, as if he saw his
mother’s likeness there. The sunken, red eyes moistened as he gazed on it.
“It is a great blessing to have a good mother,” said Marmaduke. “I lost
mine when I was little more than a child.”
“So much the better for both of you,” retorted Baines bitterly; “she
did not live for you to break her heart, and then eat out your own with
remorse. But I am talking wildly. You would no doubt have been a blessing
to her; you would have worked like a man, and she would have been proud
of you to the end. It was not so with me. I was never fond of work. I
was not fond of it then; indeed, what I did was not worthy of being
called work at all. I moped over a law-book for an hour or so in the
morning, and then read Shakspere or some other favorite poet, by way of
refreshing myself after the unpalatable task, and getting it out of my
head as quickly as possible. I went down regularly to the courts; but
as I had no legal connection, and nothing in myself to make up for the
want of patronage, or inspire confidence in my steadiness and abilities,
the attorneys brought me no business; and as I was too lazy, and perhaps
too proud, to stoop to court them, I began to feel thoroughly disgusted
with the profession, and to wish I had never entered it. I ceased to go
through the farce of my law-reading of a morning, and devoted myself
entirely to my dilettante tastes, reading poetry, and occasionally
amusing myself with writing it. My old longing for the stage came back,
and only wanted an opportunity to break out actively. This opportunity
was not far off. My mother suspected nothing of the way I was idling my
time; she knew the bar was up-hill work, and was satisfied to see me kept
waiting a few years before I became famous; but it was matter of surprise
to her that I never got a brief of any description. She set it down to
jealousy on the part of my rivals at the courts, and would now and then
wax wroth against them, wondering what expedient could be devised for
showing up the corrupt state of the profession, and forcing my enemies to
recognize my superiority as it deserved. Don’t laugh at her and think her
a fool; she was wise on every subject but this, and I fear I must have
counted for something in leading her to such ridiculous conclusions. I
held very much to preserving her good opinion, but, instead of striving
to justify it by working on to the fulfilment of her motherly ambition,
I took to cheating her, first tacitly, then deliberately and cruelly.
Things were going on in this way, when one day, one ill-fated day, I
went out as usual in the afternoon, ostensibly to the courts, but really
to kill time where I could--at my club, in the Row, or lounging in Pall
Mall. I was passing the Army and Navy Club, when I heard a voice call out:
“‘Halloo, Hamlet!’ (This was the name I went by at Oxford, on account of
my success in the part.) ‘How glad I am to see you, old boy! You’re the
very man I’ve been on the look-out for.’
“‘Hallam!’ I cried, returning his friendly grasp, and declaring how
delighted I was to see him.
“‘I’ve been beating about for you ever since I came to town, ten days
ago,’ he said. ‘I wrote to your old address, but the letter was sent back
to me. Where have you migrated to; and what are you doing?’
“I told him the brief history of my existence since we had parted at
Oxford, he to enter the army, I to begin my course of dinners-eating at
the Temple. He was now on leave; he had just come from the north, where
his regiment was quartered, and he was in high spirits at the prospect
of his month’s holiday. I asked him what it was he had been wanting me so
particularly for.
“‘I wanted to see you, first of all, for your own sake, old boy,’ he
answered heartily; ‘and in the next place I want you badly to help us
to get up some private theatricals at the Duchess of B----’s after
Easter. I suppose you are a perfect actor--a Garrick and Charles Mathews
combined--by this time. You have had plenty of practice, I’ll be bound.’
“I assured him that I had not played since the last time he and I had
brought down the house together. He was immensely surprised, and loudly
deplored my mistake in burying such a talent in the earth. He called me a
conceited idiot to have let myself be crushed by Kean, and vowed a year’s
training from a professional would bring me out a better actor than ever
Kean was. Amateur acting was all very well, but the finest untaught
genius ever born could no more compete successfully with a man who had
gone through the regular professional drill than a civilian could with a
trained soldier in executing a military manœuvre.
“‘I told you before, and I tell you again,’ he continued, as arm in arm
we paced a shady alley of the park--‘I tell you that if you went on the
stage you would cut out the best actor we have; though that is not saying
much, for a more miserable, ignorant lot of drivelling idiots no stage
ever saw caricaturing the drama than our English theatres can boast at
this moment.’
“My heart rose high, and my vanity swelled out like a peacock’s tail,
pluming itself in this luxurious air of flattery. I knew Hallam meant
what he said; but I knew that he was a light-headed young fellow, not at
all competent to judge dramatic power, and still less to counsel me. Yet
such is the intoxicating effect of vanity that I swallowed his praise as
if it had been the purest wisdom. I opened my whole heart to him, told
him how insufferably bored I was at the bar, that I had no aptitude for
it, that I was wasting my time waiting for briefs that never came--I did
not explain what pains I took to prevent their coming--until, kindling
with my own exaggerated statement as I went on, I ended by cursing the
day I took to the bar, and declaring that if it were not for my mother I
would abandon the whole thing and try my luck on the stage to-morrow.
“‘And why should you let your mother stand in your way?’ said Hallam. ‘If
she is too unreasonable to see the justice of the case, why, then … well,
I can’t for the life of me see why your happiness and fortune should be
sacrificed to it.’
“He was not a bad fellow--far from it. He did not mean to play the
devil’s advocate. I am certain he thought he was giving me excellent
advice, using his superior knowledge of the world for my benefit. But he
was a fool--an ignorant, silly, well-meaning fool. Such men, as friends,
are often worse than knaves. If he had proposed anything obviously
wicked, dishonest, or unprincipled, I should have scouted it indignantly,
and walked off in contempt. But he argued with a show of reason, in a
tone of considerate regard for my mother’s wishes and feelings that
deceived and disarmed me. He represented to me the folly of sticking to
a life that I hated and that I had next to no chance of ever succeeding
in; he had a score of examples at his fingers’ ends of young fellows
teeming with talent, patient as asses, and hard working as negroes, who
had gone for the bar and given it up in despair. My mother, like all
fond mothers, naturally expected me to prove an exception to the general
rule, and to turn out a lord chancellor of the romantic sort, rising by
sheer force of merit, without patronage, without money, without any of
the essential helps, by the power of my unaided genius. ‘This is simply
bosh, my dear fellow--innocent maternal bosh,’ persisted Hallam, ‘but as
dangerous as any poison. Cut the bar, as your better genius prompts you
to do, and take to your true calling--the drama.’
“‘For aught I know, I may have lost any talent I had,’ I replied; ‘it is
two years, remember, since I acted at all.’
“‘That is very easily ascertained,’ said my friend. ‘You will take a part
in these theatricals we are going to get up, and we will soon see whether
your talent has evaporated or not. My own impression is that it will come
out stronger than ever; you have studied, and you have seen something, if
not very much, of life since your last attempts.’
“‘My mother has a horror of the theatre,’ I said, unwilling to yield
without a show of resistance; ‘it would break her heart to see me take to
the stage.’
“‘Not if you succeed; hearts are never broken by success.’
“‘And how if I fail?’
“‘You are sure not to fail,’ he urged. ‘But look here: do nothing rashly.
Don’t say anything about this business until you have tried your hand at
it in private. We have not settled yet what the play is to be; they left
it to me to select, and I will choose one that will bring out your powers
best--not tragedy; that never was your line, in my opinion. At any rate,
you must for the present confine yourself to light parts, such as.…’
“I interrupted him in high dudgeon.
“‘Why, if I’m not tragic, I’m nothing!’ I exclaimed. ‘Every one who ever
saw me in Hamlet declared they had never seen the part so well rendered!
And you said many a time that my Macbeth was.…’
“‘First-rate--for an amateur; and I will say it again, if you like,’
protested Hallam; ‘but since then, I have seen real acting.…’
“‘Then mine was not real? I can’t for the life of me see, then…’ I broke
in.
“‘Don’t get so infernally huffy,’ said Hallam, shaking my arm with
good-humored impatience. ‘If you want to know what real, trained,
professional acting is, you must go abroad, and see how the actors of the
Théâtre Français, for instance, study and train and drill. If you will
start with the English notion that a man can take to the stage as he does
to the saddle, give up the plan at once; you will never rise above an
amateur. But to come back to our present purpose; we will select a part
to suit you, and if the rehearsals promise a genuine success--as I have
not a doubt they will--we will invite your mother to come and see you,
and she will be so proud of your triumph that the cause will be won.’
“‘My dear Hallam, it was some good fairy sent you in my way assuredly
this morning!’ I cried, grasping his arm in delight.
“I was highly elated, and took to the scheme with enthusiasm. We spent
the afternoon discussing it. It was settled that the play should be _The
Taming of the Shrew_; the part of Benedict would suit me to perfection,
Hallam declared, and I was so subdued by the amount of worldly wisdom and
general knowledge of life which he had displayed in his arguments about
my change of profession that I yielded without difficulty, and consented
to forego tragedy for the present.
“For the next week I was in a whirl of excitement. He took me to the Army
and Navy Club, and introduced me to a number of swells, all military men,
who were very agreeable and treated me with a soldier-like cordiality
that charmed me. I fancied life must be a delightful thing in such
pleasant, good-natured, well-bred company; that I was now in my proper
sphere; and that I had been hitherto out of place amidst rusty lawyers
and hard-working clerks, etc. In fact, I was a fool, and my head got
turned. I spent all my time in the day lounging about with Hallam and his
aristocratic captains and colonels, and the evenings I devoted to the
business of rehearsal, which was carried on at Lady Arabella Daucer’s,
the married daughter of the duchess at whose house the theatricals were
to be performed. I had been very graciously received by her grace, and
consequently all the lords and ladies who composed her court followed
suit. I was made as much of as if I had been ‘one of them,’ and my
acting soon established me as the leading star of the select company.
I suppose Hallam was right in saying that more mature reading and so
on had improved my dramatic talent; for certainly it came out with a
brilliancy that surprised myself. The artistic, high-bred atmosphere
that surrounded me seemed to infuse fresh vigor into me. I borrowed or
revealed a power that even my vanity had never suspected. Hallam was
enchanted, and as proud of my success as if it had been his own.
“‘I can fancy how your mother will enjoy this!’ he exclaimed one evening,
as I walked home with him to his chambers in Piccadilly. ‘She will be
beside herself with pride in you, old fellow. Fancy what it will be the
night of your first public representation! I expect a seat in her box,
mind!’
“It was just two days before the grand night, and we were having our
last rehearsal--the final one--in the theatre at B---- House, which was
lighted up and filled with a select few, in order to judge of the general
effect for the following night. I was in great spirits, and acted better
than I had done yet. The audience applauded warmly, the ladies clapping
their white-kid hands and shaking their handkerchiefs, that filled the
air with the perfumes of Arabia, while the gentlemen, more audible in
their demonstrations, cheered loudly.
“When it was over, we sat down to supper, about a hundred, of us. I sat
next the duchess, and my beautiful Katharina on the other side of me.
She was a lovely girl of twenty, a cousin of the duchess. I had been
struck by her beauty at the first, but the more I saw of her the less she
pleased me; she was a vain, coquettish young lady, and only tolerated
me because I was useful as a good set-off to her acting, which, to be
just, was excellent. I never saw anything so good off the stage, and
very seldom saw it equalled even there. Flushed with her recent triumph,
which had borrowed additional lustre from mine she was more gracious
and conversational than I had yet known her. I was flattered, though I
knew perfectly how much the caprice was worth, and I exerted myself to
the utmost to be agreeable. We were altogether a very merry party; the
champagne flowed freely, and with it the spirits of the guests rose to
sparkling point. As we rose from the table, some one called out for a
dance before we broke up. The musicians had gone to have refreshments
after the rehearsal, but they were still in the house. The duchess, a
good-natured, easy-going person, who always agreed with everybody all
round, at once ordered them in; people began to engage partners, and all
was laughing confusion round the supper-table. I turned to my pretty
neighbor, and asked if she was engaged; she replied, laughing, that being
neither a sibyl nor a clairvoyant, she could not have known beforehand
that there was to be dancing. ‘Then may I have the honor of claiming
you for the first dance, whatever it may be?’ I said; and she replied
that I might. I offered her my arm, and we took our way back into the
theatre, which was still brilliantly illuminated. We were to dance on the
stage. As we were pushing on with the crowd, I felt a strong hand laid
on my arm, and, before I had time to prevent it, Lady Caroline’s hand
was withdrawn, and the intruder stood between us. He was a square-built,
distinguished-looking man, not very young, but handsome and with the
_beau_ stamped all over him.
“‘Excuse my want of ceremony,’ he said in an easy, supercilious tone to
me. ‘I claim the first dance with Lady Caroline.’
“‘On what grounds?’ I demanded stiffly. We were still moving on, carried
with the crowd, so it was impossible to make him stand aside or to regain
my post next Lady Caroline.
“‘On the grounds of her promise,’ he replied haughtily.
“Lady Caroline uttered a laughing ‘O Lord George!’ but did not draw away
the hand which he had so unceremoniously transferred from my arm to his.
“‘Lady Caroline made no engagement before she came here to-night,’ I
said, ‘and she promised this dance to me. I refer you to herself whether
this be true or not.’
“‘Gentlemen are not in the habit of catechising ladies as to their
behavior--not, at least, in our set; and while you happen to be in it you
had better conform to its customs,’ observed Lord George, without looking
towards me.
“I felt my blood boil so that it was an effort not to strike him. Two
ladies near me who had heard the passage between us cried, ‘Shame! No
gentleman would have said that!’ This gave me courage to maintain my
self-command. We were now in the theatre; the orchestra was playing a
brilliant prelude to a waltz, and Lord George, as if he had forgotten all
about me, prepared to start. I laid my hand peremptorily on his arm.
“‘In my set,’ I said, and my voice shook with agitation, ‘gentlemen don’t
tolerate gratuitous impertinence; you either make me an apology, or I
shall exact reparation of another kind.’
“‘Oh! indeed. I shall be happy to hear from you at your convenience,’
sneered Lord George, with a low bow. He turned away, and said in a voice
loud enough to be heard by me or any one else near, ‘The puppy imagines,
I suppose, that I would meet him in a duel. The next thing will be we
shall have our footmen sending us challenges. Capital joke, by Jove!
Come, we are losing time, Lady Caroline! The waltz is half over.’
“They were starting this time, when a voice behind me called out
imperiously: ‘A moment, Lord George Halberdyne! The gentleman whom you
have insulted is a friend of mine and a guest of the Duchess of B----;
two conditions that qualify him, I think, to be an adversary of yours.’
“‘Oh! he’s a friend of yours, is he?’ repeated Lord George, facing
around. ‘That’s a natural phenomenon that I shall not stop to investigate
just now; but it certainly puts this gentleman in a new light.
Good-evening, sir. I shall have the pleasure, probably, of seeing you
to-morrow.’
“‘You shall, my lord,’ I replied; and allowing Hallam to link my arm
in his and draw me away, I turned my back on the brilliant scene, and
hurried out of the house, feverish, humiliated, desperate.
“‘The idiot! The snob! You shall give him a lesson that he’ll not forget
in a hurry,’ said Hallam, who seemed nearly as indignant and excited as
myself. ‘Are you a good shot? Have you ever stood fire?’
“I answered both questions in the negative. He was evidently put out; but
presently he said in a confident tone:
“‘Well, it does not so much matter; you are the offended party, and
consequently you have the choice of weapons. It shall be swords instead
of pistols. I suppose you’re a pretty good swordsman?’
“‘My dear Hallam,’ I said, ‘you forget that these things are not in my
line at all. I never handled a sword since we flourished them in the
fencing hall at Oxford. In fact, if the choice be mine, as you say it is,
I think I would do better to choose pistols. I have a chance with them;
and if Lord George be a swordsman, I have none with the other.’
“Hallam seemed seriously disconcerted.
“‘It’s not quite such an affair of chance as you appear to imagine,’
he said. ‘Halberdyne is one of the best shots in the service; he never
misses his mark; and he is a first-rate swordsman. ’Pon my honor I don’t
know what to advise you.’
“‘I must stand advised by myself then, and here goes for pistols,’ I
said, trying to put a bold face on it, though I confess I felt anything
but cheerful at the prospect. ‘You will stand by me, Hallam, will you
not?’
“‘Of course I will! I’ve committed myself to as much already,’ he
answered cordially; but I saw he was uncomfortable. ‘I shall take your
card to the scoundrel to-morrow morning. I wonder who he’ll have for
second--that bully Roper, very likely,’ he went on, talking more to
himself than to me.
“‘Is the meeting to take place to-morrow morning?’ I inquired; and a
sudden rush of anguish came on me as I put the question. I thought of my
mother, of all that might be in store for her so soon.
“‘We must try and put it off for a day,’ said Hallam. ‘It is deucedly
awkward, you see, if it comes off to-morrow, because of the play. You
may get hit, and it would be a terrible business if you were _hors de
concours_ for the evening.’ There was something so grimly comical in the
earnestness with which he said this that, though I was in no merry mood,
I burst out laughing.
“‘A terrible business indeed!’ I said. ‘How exceedingly unpleasant for
Lady Caroline particularly to be left in the lurch on such an occasion!
However, if I go to the wall, and Lord George comes off safe, he might
get up the part in a hurry and replace me, eh?’ I had hit the mark
without knowing it. It was jealousy that had provoked Lord George to the
gratuitous attack. I suppose there was something sardonic in my voice
that struck Hallam with the inappropriateness of his previous remarks. He
suddenly stopped, and grasping my arm warmly--
“‘I’m used to this sort of thing, my dear fellow,’ he said; ‘but don’t
fancy from that that my feelings are turned to stone, or that I forget
all that is, that may be, unpleasant in the matter. But there is no use
talking of these things; they unman a fellow, and he wants all his nerves
in working order at a moment like this. Take my advice and go home now,
and cool yourself by a quiet night for to-morrow’s work, if it is to be
to-morrow. You may have some letters to write or other things to attend
to, and they had better be done at once.’
“I replied that I had no letters to write and no business instructions
to leave. The idea of facing my home, passing my mother’s door, and then
going to bed as if the world had not turned right round; as if all life,
the present and the future, were not revolutionized--this was what I did
not, at this moment at least, feel equal to, and I said so.
“‘I would rather go for an hour to the club,’ I said, ‘if you don’t mind,
and we will have a game of billiards. I don’t feel inclined to go home,
and I should not sleep if I went to bed.’
“‘Just as you like,’ he said; ‘but the night is so fine we may as well
take a few more turns in the open air. It does one good after those
heated rooms.’
“It did me no good. I felt the most miserable man in this miserable
world. I would have given any happiness the world could have offered me
to undo this night’s work, to be as I was an hour ago, free, guiltless
of projected murder or suicide. I repeated to myself that it was not
my fault; that I had been gratuitously provoked beyond endurance; that
as a gentleman I could not have done otherwise; but these sophistries
neither calmed nor strengthened me. Truer voices rose up and answered
them in clear and imperious tones that drowned the foolish comforters.
Why had I ever entered the society where my position exposed me to such
results? What business had I there? What good could it do myself or any
one else to have been tolerated, even courted, as I fancied I was, by
these fine people, who had nothing of any sort in common with me? I had
forsaken my legitimate place, the profession that my mother had made
such heavy sacrifices to open to me. I had deliberately frittered away
my life, destroyed my prospects of honorable success; and this is what
it had brought me to! I was going either to shoot a man who had done me
no graver injury than offend my pride and punish my folly, or to be shot
down by him--and then? I saw myself brought home to my mother dangerously
wounded, dead perhaps. I heard her cry of agony, I saw her mortal
despair. I could have cried out loud for pity of her. I could have cursed
myself for my folly--for the mad, sinful folly that had rewarded her by
such an awakening.
“There is an electric current that runs from mind to mind, communicating
almost like an articulate voice the thoughts that are passing within us
at certain moments. I had not spoken for several minutes, as we paced up
and down Pall Mall, puffing our cigars in the starlight; but this current
I speak of had passed from my brain to Hallam’s, and informed him of what
my thoughts were busy on.
“‘Don’t let yourself down, old boy,’ he said good-naturedly. ‘No harm
may come of it after all; I’ve known a score of duels where both sides
came off with no more than a pin-scratch, sometimes with no scratch at
all. Not that I suspect you of being faint-hearted--I remember what a
dare-devil you were at Oxford--but the bravest of us may be a coward for
others.’
“I felt something rise in my throat as if it would choke me. I could not
get a word out.
“‘Who knows?’ continued Hallam in his cheeriest tone; ‘you may be
bringing down the house to-morrow night, and your mother may be the
proudest woman in London, seeing you the king of the company, cheered and
complimented by “fair women and brave men!” I feel as sure of it, do you
know, as if I saw it in a glass.’
“He spoke in kindness, but the levity of his tone, the utter hollowness
of his consolations, were intolerable. They mocked my misery; every word
pierced me like a knife. What evil genius had led me across this man’s
path? Only a few weeks ago I said it was the work of an angel, a good
fairy, or some absurdity of the sort. It was more likely a demon that
had done it. If I had never met him, I said to myself, I would never
have known this hour; I should have been an innocent and a happy man.
But this would not do either. I was neither innocent nor happy when I
met him. I was false to my duty, wasting my life, and sick to death of
both; only longing for the opportunity which Hallam had brought me. If I
had not met him, I should have met or sought out some other tempter, and
bitten greedily at the bait when it was offered. Still, I felt embittered
toward Hallam. I accused him, as if he had been the sole author of my
misfortune; as if I had been a baby or an idiot without free-will or
responsibility.
“‘Come into the club,’ I said, dropping his arm and throwing away the end
of my cigar.
“He did not notice the impatient movement, but readily crossed over, and
we entered the club. The lofty, spacious rooms were blazing with light
and filled with groups of men. Some were lounging on luxurious couches,
reading the evening papers, some were chatting, some were playing cards.
An air of easy grandeur, prosperity, and surface happiness pervaded the
place. I felt horribly out of keeping with it all. I had no business
amongst these wealthy, fashionable men; I was like a skeleton stalking
into the feast. I believe it was nothing but sheer human respect, the
fear of making myself ridiculous, that prevented me from turning on my
heel and rushing straight out of the house. I mechanically took up the
_Globe_, which a member tossed on to a table near me, and sat down as if
I were going to read it.
“‘Leave that alone, and come into the billiard-room,’ said Hallam. And he
whipped the paper out of my hands with brotherly unceremoniousness.
“I rose and followed him like a dog. I would have gone anywhere, done
anything, he or anybody else suggested. Physically, I was indifferent to
what I did; my brain on fire, I felt as if I were walking in a dream.
“We were passing into the billiard-room when a gentleman who was seated
at a card-table cried out to Hallam to come and join them. It was Col.
Leveson, a brother officer and great friend of his. Hallam replied that
he was going on to have a pull at the balls; but he strolled over to see
how the game was going. I mechanically followed him. Some of the players
knew me, and greeted me with a friendly nod. They were absorbed in the
game; it was lansquenet. I knew very little about cards; but lansquenet
was the one game that interested me. I had lost a few sovereigns a night
or two before at it, and, as the luck seemed set in against the banker,
it flashed over me I could not do better than to take a hand and win them
back now. I did not, however, volunteer to join the game. In my present
state of smarting pride I would not run the risk of being made to feel
I was an intruder. Unluckily, Hallam’s friend, reading temptation on my
countenance perhaps, said, holding up his cards to me: “I’m in splendid
vein, but I must be off. I’ll sell you my hand for half a sovereign, if
you like.”
“‘Done!’ I said; and paying the half-sovereign, I sat down. I had
scarcely taken his place when there was a noise in the adjoining room
announcing fresh arrivals. I recognized one loud, domineering voice above
the others, and presently Lord George Halberdyne came in.
“‘Going, Leveson?’ he said. ‘Luck against you, I suppose?’
“‘On the contrary, never was in better vein in my life,’ replied the
colonel. ‘I sold my hand for a song, because I have an appointment that I
can’t forego.’
“‘Who’s the lucky dog you sold it to?’ asked Lord George.
“‘Mr. Botfield,’ said Col. Leveson. (My real name is Botfield; I only
took the name of Baines when I fell into disgrace and misery.)
“Lord George muttered an exclamation of some sort--whether of surprise or
vexation I could not tell--and advanced to the table.
“‘Do you mind my joining you?’ he said, appealing to nobody in
particular. There was a general assent, and he sat down. Hallam would not
take a hand. He hated cards; his passion was for billiards, and he played
nothing else. He came and stood behind me to watch the game. I felt him
lay his hand on my shoulder, as if to encourage me and remind me that he
was there to stand by me and take my part against my late bully, if needs
be. It did not seem as if he was likely to be called upon to do so. My
late bully was as gracious as man could be--at least he intended to be
so; but I took his familiar facetiousness for covert impertinence, and it
made my blood boil quite as fiercely as his recent open insult had done.
I was not man of the world enough to understand that Lord George was only
doing his duty to society; that he was in fact behaving beautifully, with
infinite tact, like an accomplished gentleman. I could not understand
that the social canons of his ‘set’ made it incumbent on a man to joke
and laugh and demean himself in this lively, careless fashion towards
the man whom he was going to shoot in a few hours. I grew inwardly
exasperated, and it was nothing but pride and an unprecedented effort
of will that enabled me to keep my temper and remain outwardly cool. For
a time, for about twenty minutes, the luck continued in the same vein;
my half-sovereign had been paid back to me more than fifty times. Col.
Leveson was right when he said he had sold his hand for a song. Hallam
was all this time standing behind my chair, smoking his cigar, and
throwing in a word between the puffs. The clock struck two.
“‘Come off now, Botfield,’ he said, tapping me on the shoulder--‘come off
while your star is shining; it is sure to go down if you stay too long.’
“‘Very likely, most sage and prudent mentor,’ retorted Lord George;
‘but that cuts both ways. Your friend has been pocketing our money up
to this; it’s only fair he should give us a chance of winning it back
and pocketing a little of his. That is a law _universally_ recognized, I
believe.’ As he said this, he turned to me good-humoredly enough; but I
saw where the emphasis pointed, and, stung to the quick, I replied that I
had not the least intention of going counter to the law; I would remain
as long as the game lasted.
“‘Halloo! That’s committing yourself somewhat rashly,’ interposed Hallam.
‘You don’t know what nefarious gamblers these fellows are; they’re
capable of keeping it up till morning!’
“‘If they do, I shall keep it up with them,’ I replied recklessly. I was
desperate, and my luck was good.
“Hallam said no more, but sauntered to the other side of the table, where
I _felt_ his eyes fixed on me warningly, entreatingly.
“I looked up at last, and met them fastened on me in a mute, impatient
appeal. I answered it by a peremptory nod. He saw I would not brook
farther interference, so he took himself off to the billiard-room, and
did not reappear for an hour.
“I cannot recall clearly what passed during the interval. The luck had
turned suddenly against me; but, nothing daunted, I went on playing
desperately, losing as fast as I had been winning, only in much heavier
sums; for the stakes had risen enormously on the change of luck. There
was a large pool, immense it seemed to me--some two hundred pounds. I
lost again and again. At last terror sobered me. I began to realize the
madness of my conduct, and wanted to withdraw; but they cried out against
it, reminded me that I had pledged myself to remain and see the game out.
Lord George was loudest in protesting that I must remain. ‘One can’t have
luck always,’ he said, ‘A man must put up with it when the tide turns. It
is of good omen for you, Mr. Botfield,’ he added pointedly; ‘you will be
in splendid luck to-morrow.’
“I shuddered. I can remember the horrible, sick sensation that ran
through me as he said this, lightly, pleasantly, as if he alluded to a
rowing-match I had in view. I saw my mother’s pale face beckoning me to
come away--to stop before I ruined her utterly. I almost made a movement
to rise, but something glued me to the chair. The game went on. I again
held the bank, and again lost. I had no money about me except the forty
pounds or so I had won at the outset; but several leaves out of my
pocketbook were strewn about the table bearing I. O. U.’s for nine times
that sum. I suppose by this time I had quite lost my senses. I know that
I went on betting like a maniac, with the feverish, triumphant impulse of
a man in delirium. I was losing tremendously. I remember nothing except
the sound of my own voice and Lord George’s calling _banco!_ again and
again, and how the cry ran through me like a blade every time, and how I
hastily tore out fresh leaves and wrote down the sums I lost, and tossed
them to the winner, and went on. All this time we had been drinking
deeply of brandy and water. I was naturally abstemious, but to-night I
drank recklessly. The wonder was--and I was going to say the pity--that
it had not stupefied me long ago, and so made me physically incapable
of continuing my insane career. But excitement acted, I suppose, as an
antidote, and prevented the alcohol from taking effect as it otherwise
must have done. At last Hallam came back. I have a vague recollection
of hearing him exchange some remarks in an undertone with one of the
players, who had given up and was now watching the game with a number
of others who had dropped in from adjoining rooms. I then heard him
say, ‘Good God! he is ruined twice over!’ I heard nothing more. I had
fallen back insensible in my chair. Everybody started up; the cards were
dropped, and all was confusion and terror. It appears that at the first
moment they thought I was dead. A young guardsman present declared I
was, and that it was disease of the heart; a young kinsman of his had
dropped down on parade only a month ago just in the same way. There was
a cry for a doctor, and two or three ran out to fetch one. Before he
arrived, however, I had given signs of returning consciousness. Up to
this moment Lord George had been anxiously looking on, silent and pale,
they said. He had borne me with Hallam to a couch in the next room, where
the air was free from cigar-fumes, and had opened the window to admit
the fresh night-breeze. He had done, in fact, what any humane person
would have done under the circumstances; but he had done it in a manner
that betokened more than ordinary interest. He drew an audible breath of
relief the moment he saw my eyelids quiver and heard me breathe like a
man awaking to life. Hallam signed to him to leave the room; he did not
wish his face to be the first I saw on opening my eyes. Lord George no
doubt understood; for he at once withdrew into the card-room. He drew the
door after him, but he did not quite close it, so that I heard dreamily,
yet distinctly, all that was said. Lord George’s second for the morrow’s
meeting, the Hon. Capt. Roper, inquired eagerly how I was going on. ‘Oh!
he’ll be all right presently,’ was the reply, spoken in Lord George’s
off-hand way. ‘There was nothing to make such a fuss about; the poor
devil was scared to see how much money he had lost, and fainted like a
girl--that’s all.’
“‘Hallam says he is quite cleared out by to-night’s ill-luck,’ observed
some one.
“‘Served him right,’ said Lord George; ‘it will teach puppies of his kind
not to come amongst us and make fools of themselves.’
“‘And do you mean to shoot him to-morrow?’ inquired the same voice.
“‘I mean to give him a chance of shooting me; unless,’ he continued--and
I saw in imagination, as vividly as if my bodily eyes had seen it,
the cold sneer that accompanied the remark--‘unless he shows the white
feather and declines fighting, which is just as likely.’
“While this little dialogue had been going on in subdued tones close by
the door which opened at the head of the sofa where I lay, Hallam was
conversing in animated whispers with two gentlemen in the window. He was
not more than a minute absent, when he returned to my side, and, seeing
my eyes wide open, exclaimed heartily: ‘Thank God! he’s all right again!’
“I grasped his hand and sat up. They gave me some sal-volatile and water
to drink, and I was, as he said, all right again. But it was not the
stimulant that restored me, that gave me such sudden energy, and nerved
me to act at once, to face my fate and defy it. I took his arm, and led
him, or let him lead me, to some quieter place near, and then I asked him
how much he thought I had lost.
“‘Don’t think of that yet, my dear fellow,’ he said; ‘you are too done up
to discuss it. We will see what can be done to-morrow.’
“‘Five thousand pounds!’ I said. ‘Do you hear that? Five thousand pounds!
That means that I am a beggar, which an’t of much consequence; and that
I’ve made a beggar of my mother. She will have to sell the bed from under
her to pay it, to save my honor. A curse upon me for bringing this blight
upon her!’
“‘Tut! tut! man, don’t take on like a woman about it!’ said Hallam.
‘These things can be arranged; no need to make matters out worse than
they are. I’ll speak to Lord George, and see what terms we can make with
him.’
“He made me light a cigar, and left me alone, while he went back to
parley with the man who held my fortune, my life, my all in his hands.
I never heard exactly all that passed between them. I only know that in
answer to Lord George’s question, put in a tone of insulting haughtiness,
‘Has the fellow pledged himself for more than he’s worth? _Can’t_ he
pay?’ Hallam replied: ‘He can, but it will ruin him’; upon which the
other retorted with a laugh, ‘What the devil is that to me?’ and turned
his back on my second, who had nothing left but to take Capt. Roper aside
and arrange for the morrow’s meeting. He came back, and told me all was
settled; that Halberdyne was behaving like a brute, and would be tabooed
in the clubs and every decent drawing-room before twenty-four hours. This
thought seemed to afford him great satisfaction. It gave me none. Anguish
had drowned resentment. I could think of nothing except that I was a
ruined man, that I had beggared my mother, and that I was going to fight
a duel in a few hours. Richmond Park--6 A.M.--pistols at thirty paces!
This was how the appointment was notified by our seconds to both of us.
Suddenly a light burst on me--a ray of hope, of consolation: I might be
killed in this duel, and, if so, surely my honor would be saved and my
debt cancelled. Lord George would not pursue my mother for the money.
She should know nothing of this night’s work until after the meeting. If
I escaped with a wound, I would tell her; if I died, who would have the
cruelty to do so? I told Hallam of this sudden thought as he walked home
with me. He approved of it, and cheered me up by almost assuring me that
I should be shot. Halberdyne was a dead-shot; it was most likely that I
should not leave the field alive.
“The night passed--the few hours of it that must elapse before the time
named for the meeting. 0 God! how did I live through them? And yet this
was nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to what was yet in store for
me.…
“The duel took place. Lord George wounded me in the hip. He escaped
unhurt; I fired in the air. I was carried home on a door, insensible.
Hallam had gone before to prepare my mother. For some weeks it was feared
I would not live. Then amputation was talked of. I escaped finally with
being a cripple for life. Before I was out of danger, Hallam’s leave
expired, and he went to rejoin his regiment. He had been very assiduous
in calling to inquire for me, had seen my mother, and, judging by her
passionate grief that I was in a fair way not to recover, he had forborne
mentioning anything about the five thousand pounds. She promised to write
and let him know when any change took place. Meantime, she had found out
my secret. I had talked incessantly of it in my delirium, and with an
accuracy of iteration that left no doubt on her mind but that there was a
foundation of truth in the feverish ravings. The doctor was of the same
mind, and urged her to give me an opportunity of relieving my mind of the
burden, whatever it was, as soon as this was possible.
“The first day that I was strong enough to bear conversation she
accordingly broached the subject. I inferred at once that Hallam had told
her everything, and repeated the miserable story, only to confirm what I
supposed he had already said.
“My mother was sitting by my bedside. She busied herself with teaseling
out linen into lint for my wound, and so, purposely no doubt, kept her
face continually bent or averted from mine.
“Seeing how quietly she took it, I began to think I had overrated the
misfortune; that we had larger resources in some way than I had imagined.
‘Then it is possible for us to pay this horrible debt and save my honor,
and yet not be utterly beggared, mother?’ I said eagerly. She looked at
me with a smile that must surely have been the reflex of some angel near
her whom I could not see. ‘Yes, my boy; he shall be paid, and we shall
not be beggars,’ she said gently, and pressed my hand in both her own.
‘You should have told me about it at once; it has been preying on your
mind and retarding your cure all this time. I will see Mr. Kerwin to-day,
and have it arranged at once. Promise me now, like a good boy, to forget
it and think no more of it until you are quite well. Will you promise?’
“I did not answer, but signed with my lips for her to kiss me. She rose
and twined her arms around me, and let me sob out my sorrow and my love
upon her breast.
“It was about three days after this that she handed me a letter to read;
it was from Lord George to Mr. Kerwin, and ran thus:
“SIR: I beg to acknowledge the receipt of the sum of five
thousand pounds which you have forwarded to my lawyers in the
name of Mr. Botfield. I make this acknowledgment personally in
order to express my sincere satisfaction at the happy progress
of Mr. Botfield’s recovery, and beg you will convey this
sentiment to him.--I remain, etc.,
“HALBERDYNE.”
“‘Mother! mother!’ I cried out, and opened my arms to her in a passion
of tears. But she laid her finger smilingly on my lips, and made me be
silent. In a month hence, when I was well, we should talk it all over,
but not now.
“Before the month was out, _she was dead_!”…
* * * * *
Marmaduke started to his feet with a cry of horror, and Botfield, unable
to control the anguish that his own narrative evoked, dropped his head
into his hands, and shook the room with his sobs.
“O dear God! that I should have lived to tell it!--to talk over the
mother that I murdered! Brave, tender, generous mother! I killed you, I
broke your heart, and then--then I brought shame upon your memory! O God!
O God! why have I outlived it?” He rocked to and fro, almost shouting in
his paroxysm of despair. Marmaduke had never beheld such grief; he had
never in his life been so deeply moved with pity. He did not know what to
say, what to do. His heart prompted him to do the right thing: he fell on
his knees, and, putting his arms around the wretched, woe-worn man, he
burst into tears and sobbed with him.
Botfield suffered his embrace for a moment, and then, pressing his horny
palm on the young man’s blond head, he muttered: “God bless you! God
bless you for your pity!”
As soon as they were both calmed, Marmaduke asked him if he would not
prefer finishing the story to-morrow. But he signed to him to sit down;
that he would go on with it to the end.
“What is there more to tell?” he said, sadly shaking his head.
“I was lying a cripple on my bed when she was carried to her grave.
I was seized with a violent brain fever, which turned to typhus, and
they took me to the hospital. The servants were dismissed; they had
received notice from my mother. She had foreseen everything, taken every
necessary step as calmly as if the catastrophe I had brought upon her
had been a mere change of residence for her own convenience. All we had
was gone. That brave answer of hers to my question about our resources
was a subterfuge of her love. If ever a sin was sinless, assuredly that
half-uttered falsehood was. She had directed the lawyer to raise the
money immediately, at every sacrifice. She meant to work for her bread,
and trusted to me to make the task light and short to her. I would have
done it had she been spared to me. So help me God, I would! But now that
she was gone, I had nothing to work for. I left the hospital a cripple
and a beggar. I did not even yet know to what an extent. I went straight
to our old house, expecting to find it as I had left it--that is, before
all consciousness had left me. I found it dismantled, empty; painters
busy on scaffolding outside. I went to Mr. Kerwin, and there learned the
whole truth. Nothing remained to me but suicide. Nothing kept me from it,
I believe, but the prayers of my mother.”
“You were a Christian, then?” interrupted Marmaduke in a tone of
unfeigned surprise.
“I ought to have been. My father was, and my mother was; I was brought up
as one, until I went to the university and lost what little belief I had.
For a moment it seemed to come back to me when I found myself alone in
the world. I remember walking deliberately down to the river’s side when
I left the lawyer’s office, fully determined to drown myself. But before
I reached the water, I heard my mother’s voice calling so distinctly to
me to stop that I felt myself arrested as by some visible presence. I
heard the voice saying, ‘Do you wish never to see me again even in the
next world?’ Of course it was the work of imagination, of my over-wrought
feelings; but the effect was the same. I stopped, and retraced my steps
to Mr. Kerwin’s.”
“It was your guardian angel, perhaps your mother’s, that saved you,” said
Marmaduke.
“Oh! I forgot,” said Botfield. “Your brother is a Catholic; I suppose you
are too?”
Marmaduke nodded assent; he felt that his Catholicity was not much
to boast of. Like the poor outcast before him, he had lost his faith
practically, though he adhered to it in name.
“Yes, it was an angel of some sort that rescued me,” said Botfield; “it
was no doubt my own fault if the rescue was not complete. I went back
to Mr. Kerwin, and asked him to give me, or get me, something to do.
My chance on the stage was at an end, even if I could have turned to
that: I was dead lame. He got me a situation as clerk in an office; but
the weariness of the life and the pressure of remorse were more than
I could bear. I took to drink. They forgave me once, twice; the third
time I was dismissed. But of what use is it to go over that disgusting,
pitiable story? Step by step I went down, lower and lower, sinking each
time into fouler depths, drinking more loathsome draughts, wallowing in
mire whose very existence such as you don’t dream of. I will spare you
all those details. Enough that I came at last to what you see me. One
day when hunger was gnawing me, and even the satanic consolation of the
public-house was shut against me for want of a sixpence to pay for a
glass of its diabolical elixir, I fell in with a man of the trade; he
offered me work and bread. Hunger is not a dainty counsellor. I closed
with the offer, and so sank into the last slough that humanity can take
refuge in.…
“Now, Mr. Walpole, you have heard my history; it was a pain, and yet,
somehow, a relief, to me to tell it. It has not been a very pleasant
one for you to listen to; still, I don’t regret having inflicted it on
you. You are very young; you are prosperous and happy, and, most likely,
perfectly free from any of the temptations that have been the bane of my
life; still, it never hurts a young man starting in life to hear an older
man’s experience. If ever temptation should come near you, dash it from
you with all your might; scorn and defy it from the first; hold no parley
with it; to treat with perdition is to be lost.”
“You have done me a greater service than you know of,” said Marmaduke,
rising and preparing to take leave of his singular entertainer. “Perhaps
one day I may tell you.…” He took a turn in the narrow room, and then,
coming back to Botfield, resumed in an agitated manner: “Why should I not
own it at once? You have trusted me with all; I will tell you the truth.”
Botfield looked up in surprise, but said nothing.
“I stand on the very brink of the abyss against which you warn me. Like
you, I am a barrister; like you, I hate my profession, and spend my time
reading poetry and playing at private theatricals. They are my passion.
A few nights ago I tried my luck at cards, and won. This tempted me; I
played last night and lost--precisely the sum of twenty pounds.”
Botfield started and uttered a suppressed exclamation.
“I am in debt--not much--a mere trifle, if it lead to no worse! You see
now what a service you may have done me; who knows? Perhaps my mother’s
guardian angel prompted you to tell me your story as a warning, to save
me before it was too late! I know that I came here to-day at the bidding
of an angel; and reluctant enough I was to take the message!”
“I never thought to be of use to any one while I lived,” said Botfield
with emotion. “I bless God, anyhow, if my wretched example proves a
warning to you. Who sent you to me? I understood it was your brother?”
“So it was; but it was to please my sister that I consented to come. She
is one of those angels that people talk about, but don’t often see. You
will let her come and see you, Mr. Botfield, will you not?”
He held out his delicate lavender kid hand, and pressed Botfield’s grimy
fingers cordially.
When Marmaduke got home, he inquired at once where his sister was, and,
hearing she was in her room, he crept up quietly to the door and knocked.
He entered so quietly that Nelly had scarcely time to jump off her knees.
Marmaduke saw at once that he had taken her by surprise; he saw also that
her eyes were red.
“What is the matter?” she asked, with a frightened look. “Has anything
happened? You have been away so long! What kept you, Marmaduke? Where
have you been?”
“Where you sent me.”
“To Stephen’s poor man? Why, you have been out nearly two hours! It did
not take all that time to give your message?” said incredulous Nelly, and
her heart beat with recent apprehension.
“No; but Stephen’s poor man had a message for me. Sit down here, and
I will tell you what it was. But how cold you are, darling! You are
positively perished! Where have you been?”
“Here,” said Nelly.
“Ever since I went out?”
“Ever since you went out.”
“What were you doing?” he persisted, fixing a strange look on her.
She blushed, hesitated, and then said simply, “I was praying for you,
Marmaduke.”
He folded her in his arms, and whispered, “I was right to say it was an
angel sent me.”
Then, taking a warm shawl that he saw hanging up, he wrapped her in it,
and sat down beside her, and told the story as it had been told to him.
When it was over, Nelly’s head was on his breast, and the brother’s tears
of penitence were mingling with the sister’s tears of joy.
“Let us go down now and tell Stephen,” said Marmaduke, when he had
finished.
“Will you tell him everything?” asked Nelly.
“Yes, everything.”
“Dear Marmy! I am so happy I could sing for joy,” she said, smiling
through her tears. “Let us kneel down here and say one little prayer
together; will you?”
And he did.
“How did you thaw the man and break up the ice he seemed to be buried
under?” was Stephen’s amazed inquiry when other more precious and
interesting questions were exhausted.
“I merely did what Nelly told me,” said Marmaduke: “I listened to him.”
On Christmas morning Marmaduke announced his intention of dining out.
It was a sacrifice to all three, but no one opposed him. Nelly made
up a store of provisions, including a hot plum-pudding, which was put
with other steaming hot dishes into the ample basket that the gay young
man carried off in a cab with him to Red Pepper Lane. There he found a
clean hearth, a blazing fire, and a table spread with a snowy cloth, and
all necessaries complete. Some fairy had surely been at work in that
gloomy place. The host was clean and brushed, looking like an eccentric
gentleman in his new clothes amidst those incongruous surroundings.
He and Marmaduke unpacked the basket with many an exclamation at its
inexhaustible depths. That was the happiest, if not the very merriest,
Christmas dinner that ever Marmaduke partook of.
When it was over, and they were puffing a quiet cigar over the fire,
steps were heard on the rickety stairs, and then a knock at the door, and
a silvery voice saying: “May we come in?” It was Stephen and Nelly.
“I don’t see why you should have all the pleasure to yourself,” said
Nelly, with her bright laugh; “you would never have been here at all if I
had not teased you into taking the message!”
* * * * *
If this were a romance instead of a true episode, the story should end by
the some-time rag-and-bone man becoming a Catholic, rising to wealth and
distinction, and marrying Nelly. But the events of real life don’t adjust
themselves so conveniently to the requirements of the story-teller.
Stephen Walpole got Mr. Botfield a situation in the post-office, where,
by good conduct and intelligent diligence, he rose gradually to a
position of trust, which was highly paid. He never married. Who knows?
Perhaps he had his little romance, and never dared to tell it.
THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH CONGRESS.
The second annual Congress of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the
United States was held at Philadelphia during the early part of November.
Church congresses are new things in this country, and the Episcopalians
are not yet quite at home in them. Their first experiment, made at New
York in 1874, was not wholly successful. Some of their leading bishops
and presbyters treated it rather cavalierly, apparently in the fear that
it was going to weaken the bonds of ecclesiastical discipline, and open
vexatious questions which the church for years had been expending all its
learning and ingenuity in trying _not_ to answer. But church congresses
seemed to be very proper and respectable things for every denomination
which laid claim to antiquity: they are common in the mother-church of
England; they are efficient and interesting organizations in what our
Anglican friends are pleased to call the Roman branch of the church of
Christ; Dr. Döllinger has them regularly in the Old-Catholic “branch”;
and so the originators of the movement in the American “branch” have
persevered in their attempt to establish them here. The meeting in
Philadelphia appears to have been all that its promoters could have
reasonably expected. The denominational papers of various shades of
opinion concur in believing that the permanency of the Congress as an
annual institution is now nearly secured; and we find one of these
journals rejoicing that the meeting passed off with “entire cordiality,”
and that nothing in the proceedings “elicited prejudice or excited
hostile action.” This indeed was something to boast of. Perhaps it would
have been still more gratifying had not the same paper explained that
this unexpected peaceableness of the Congress arose “from the fact that
no resolutions were adopted, no legislation proposed, no elections held.
When any of these are distinctly in view, those who participate range
themselves into parties, and it is almost impossible not to resort to
measures to ensure victory which generate unkind feelings and provoke
exaggerated statements.” All which gives us a queer idea of the manner
in which the Holy Ghost is supposed to operate in the councils of the
Protestant Episcopal Church. But no matter. Let us be glad, for the
sake of propriety, that this was merely a meeting for talk, and not
for action. The strict rules applicable to conventions, synods, and
other business meetings were not in force. The topics of discussion were
not so much points of doctrine as minor questions of discipline and
methods of applying the machinery of the church to the every-day work
of religion. And with the knowledge that no vote was to be taken upon
any subject whatever, the Congress unanimously agreed to let every man
say what he pleased. The great variety of irreconcilable things which it
accordingly pleased the gentlemen to say seems to have attracted remark,
and denominational papers point to it with pride as a proof of the large
toleration allowed within the bosom of the church. If they like it, far
be it from us to interfere with their enjoyment.
The Episcopal Church is one of the largest and richest of the Protestant
sects. Its clergy are popularly supposed to boast of more general
culture and enjoy fuller opportunities for study than those of the other
religious bodies, and its people are found in large numbers among the
educated and well-to-do classes. A congress of this church, gathered
from all parts of the country, representing all shades of opinion, and
possessing almost unbounded facilities for talk and deliberation, ought
therefore to have elicited a great deal that was worth remembering. The
programme of the sessions was stated in an alluring manner by Bishop
Clarke, of Rhode Island, who made the introductory address. “We come,”
said he, “to consider how the doctrine and organization of the church can
be brought most effectually to sanctity”; and then he went on to speak
briefly of the particular things, in our daily experience, which the
church ought to purify and bless--our business affairs, our amusements,
our care of the poor, our family relations, the marriage tie--practical
points all of them, and points, too, in which the church and the state
are more or less in contact.
Well, having laid out this plan of work, how did the Congress address
itself to it? The first session gave a rather curious illustration of
the practical spirit of the assemblage; for the reverend gentlemen,
by way of “bringing the doctrine and organization of the church most
effectually to sanctity,” rushed straightway with hot haste into the
subject of “ultramontanism and civil authority,” and pounded upon the
doors of the Vatican the whole afternoon. The Rev. Francis Wharton, D.D.,
of Cambridge, Mass., was careful in the outset to distinguish between
ultramontanism and the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. The
mass of us, he believes, have always been loyal to the territory of whose
population we form a part, but our loyalty has no connection with our
religion. If we followed the teachings of our church, Dr. Wharton thinks
we should be a dangerous set of people. “Ultramontanism teaches that the
Pope, a foreign prince, deriving his support from a foreign civilization,
is entitled to set aside governments which he considers disloyal, and to
annul such institutions as he does not approve.” We confess that we do
not know what Dr. Wharton means by the Pope deriving his support from a
foreign civilization. If he means his physical support, then the doctor
is both wrong and right; for that is derived from the faithful of the
whole world. If he means that his authority is derived from a foreign
civilization, then the doctor is apparently irreverent; for the papal
authority is derived from the institution of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and
surely a respectable Cambridge divine would not call that a foreign
civilization.
As for the distinction which is drawn between American and ultramontane
Catholics, let us repudiate it with all possible warmth before we go
any further. Ultramontanism is an objectionable word, because it was
invented to localize a school of religious doctrine which is the only
_catholic_ school--the school acknowledged all over the world; but if it
be understood as defining that spirit of faith and piety which yields
all love and obedience to the Vicar of Christ, accepts all the Vatican
decrees gladly and without reserve, is not afraid of paying too much
respect to the Holy See, or showing too much humility before God, or
believing one little particle more than we are commanded to believe
under pain of anathema, then the Catholics of America are ultramontane
Catholics to a man. Probably there are no Catholics in any country of
the world less disposed to compromise in matters of religious duty,
and more thoroughly imbued with filial reverence and love for the Head
of God’s church on earth, than the Catholics of the United States. The
spirit of the church in Rome is the spirit of the church in America; and
when Dr. Wharton asserts that “the political tenets of ultramontanism
are repudiated by the leading Catholic statesmen of our land,” he makes
an utterly erroneous statement, against which American Catholics will
be the first to protest. It is very true that with the fictitious
ultramontanism conceived of his fears and prejudices neither Americans
nor any other sensible people have the slightest sympathy. But show us
what Rome teaches, and there you have precisely what the church in the
United States accepts. If it is true, therefore that the Pope claims
authority “to set aside governments which he considers disloyal, and
to annul such institutions as he does not approve,” it must be true
that America upholds his pretensions. Dr. Wharton may live in the fear
that His Holiness will some day send the Noble Guard to set aside the
government of Gen. Grant whenever it becomes “disloyal”; while he may
well feel an absolute certainty that our common-school system, our
constitutional prohibition of the establishment of a state church, our
laws against sectarian appropriations, and various other wicked and
heretical provisions found on our statute-books, will sooner or later be
“annulled” by a decree from the Vatican. He need not flatter himself that
any superior enlightenment among the Catholics of America will save the
Protestant community from the miserable fate in store for it. We are not
a bit wiser or better than the Pope.
The possible interference of the Vatican with our Congresses and
ballot-boxes Dr. Wharton evidently regards as a very remote danger. There
are points, however, he thinks, where the Vatican clashes every day with
the civil power, and where it ought to be resisted with all the energy
at our command. And just at this part of the reverend doctor’s address
we should like very much to have seen the face of Bishop Clarke. In his
introductory remarks Bishop Clarke told the Congress that one of the
most important subjects for churchmen to consider was the influence or
authority of the church over the family relations. “The Gospel obtained
hold of the family before it touched the state. How does the condition
of the marriage bond stand to-day? In some of our States it is as easy
to solve it as it is to join it. Is this the religion of which we have
made such boast?” But here, before the echoes of the bishop’s words
have fairly died away, is the Rev. Dr. Wharton on his feet denouncing
as a crime the very interference which Bishop Clarke inculcated as a
duty. It is one of the usurpations of ultramontanism, says the Cambridge
doctor, to annul civil marriages which the state holds binding, and to
treat as invalid divorces which the state holds good. This is one of
the most serious conflicts between the state and the Vatican, and it
is one, if we understand aright the somewhat imperfect report of his
remarks, in which Protestant Episcopalians must prepare themselves to
take an earnest part, remembering that, while their church is free, it
is “a free church within a free sovereign state, and that this state,
in its own secular sovereignty, is supreme.” Here, then, we have a
distinct declaration that the family relation is not a proper subject of
religious regulation. If the state sees fit to make it as easy to loose
the marriage bond as to tie it, the church has no right to object; it
is a secular matter, and the free sovereign state is supreme in its own
secular sovereignty. If the state sanctions an adulterous connection, the
Protestant Episcopal Church must revise its Bible and bless the unholy
tie; it is a secular matter, and the free sovereign state is supreme
in its own secular sovereignty. The sanctity of the family relation is
under the protection of the church, says Bishop Clarke. No such thing,
replies Dr. Wharton--that is an insolent ultramontane pretension; the
Protestant Episcopal Church knows its place, and does not presume to
interfere with the legislature. “The Gospel obtained hold of the family
before it touched the state,” says the bishop. “Oh! well, we have changed
all that,” rejoins the doctor; the glory of the Protestant Episcopal
gospel nowadays is that it lets the family alone. In point of fact,
Episcopalianism is not quite so bad as this hasty advocate would have
us believe; for it does censure, in a mild way, the laxity of some of
the divorce laws, and does not always lend itself to the celebration of
bigamous marriages. But Dr. Wharton is correct in his main position--that
his church leaves to the state the control of the family relation;
and if she shrinks from the logical consequences of her desertion of
duty, that is only because a remnant of Catholic feeling remains to her
in the midst of her heresies and contradictions. The time must come,
however, when these illogical fragments of truth will be thrown away,
and the Protestant Episcopal Church will take its place beside the other
Protestant bodies in renouncing all right to be heard on one of the most
important points of contact between the law of God and the concerns of
every-day life. It is impossible to allow the civil power to bind and
loose the family tie at pleasure, without admitting that the subject is
entirely outside the domain of ecclesiastical supervision. The attempt of
the Episcopal Church to compromise on adultery is an absurdity, and in
the steady course of Protestant development it will surely be abolished.
Is there any particular in which the Protestant Episcopal Church fairly
takes hold of the family? We have seen that she abandons to politicians
the sacred tie between the parents; what has she to do with the next
domestic concern--the education of the child? Dr. Wharton holds it to
be one of her distinguishing claims to public favor that she abandons
this duty also to the secular power. The right to control education,
according to him, is, like the right to sanction the marriage tie, one of
the insolent pretensions of the Vatican usurper. The state, he thinks,
is bound not only to educate all its subjects, but to decide what points
a secular education shall cover, while the church may only add to this
irreligious training such pious instruction as the child may have time
and strength to receive after the more serious lessons are over. “The
church,” he says, “concedes to the state the right and duty to require
a secular education from all, while for itself it undertakes, as a free
church in a free state, the right and duty to give a religious education
to all within its reach.” Expressed in somewhat plainer English, this
means that thirty hours a week ought to be given to the dictionary
and multiplication table, and one hour to the catechism and the ten
commandments. Send your children to schools all the week where they
will hear nothing whatever of religion, where that most vital of all
concerns will be a forbidden subject, where the idea will be practically,
if not in so many words, impressed upon their tender minds that it is
of no consequence whether they are Christians, or Jews, or infidels,
so long as they master the various branches of worldly knowledge which
promote success in the secular affairs of life; and then get them
into Sunday-school if you can, for a wild and ineffectual attempt to
counteract the evil tendencies of the previous six days’ teachings.
This is trying to give a Christian education without the corner-stone
of Christian doctrine; building a house upon the sand, and then running
around it once a week with a hatful of pebbles and a trowel of mud to
put a foundation under the finished structure. Dr. Wharton seems to
embody in his own person a surprising variety of the inconsistencies for
which the Protestant Episcopal Church has such a peculiar celebrity.
For here, after he has claimed credit for his church as the champion of
a secular education, he tells the Congress that secularism is one of
the great dangers of the age, against which the church must fight with
all her strength. “The battle with secularism has to be fought out.” It
must be fought “by the church, and eminently by our own church. Our duty
therefore is to fit ourselves for the encounter, and we must do this
with the cause of religion, undertaking in its breadth and embracing
all branches of religious, spiritual, and ethical culture.” Well, but,
dear sir, you have just said that during the most important period of
man’s intellectual development, when the mind is receiving impressions
which are likely to last through life, the church ought to stand aside
and let the state _teach_ secularism without hindrance. Are you going to
cultivate secularism in the young until it becomes firmly rooted, and
then fight against it with sermons and essays which your secularized
young men will not listen to? How do you expect to impart religious,
spiritual, and ethical culture when you have formally renounced your
inestimable privilege and your sacred duty as a guide and teacher of
children? You propose to wait until your boys have come to man’s estate
before you attempt to exercise any influence upon them; and then, when
they have grown up with the idea that religious influence ought to be
avoided as one avoids pestilence, you wonder and complain that they
are indifferent to the church and will not hear you. “The battle with
secularism has to be fought out.” Your way of fighting is to abandon the
outposts, leave front and rear and flanks unprotected, and throw away
your arms.
It was one of the peculiarities of the Congress that whatever error
was promulgated in the essays and debates, somewhere in the course
of the sessions an antidote was sure to be furnished--this being an
illustration, we suppose, of the extreme toleration of opinion to
which Bishop Clarke referred as “somewhat singular” in a church “so
fixed in its doctrines.” Hence we need not be surprised to find in
the second day’s proceedings a refutation of the educational theories
propounded during the first. Dr. Wharton made use of the principle of
secular schooling as a weapon of offence against the Vatican. But when
the delegates had relieved their minds and vindicated their Protestant
orthodoxy by giving the poor Pope about as much as he could stagger away
with, they turned their attention to their own condition, and one of
their first subjects of inquiry was what secular education had done for
them. The topic of consideration on the second morning was “The Best
Methods of Procuring and Preparing Candidates for the Ministry.” Dr.
Schenck of Brooklyn began by stating that the supply of candidates for
holy orders was not only inadequate to the needs of the church, but it
was falling off--a smaller number offering themselves to-day than six
or seven years ago. This, said he, should excite the gravest concern of
the church; and nobody seemed disposed to contradict him. Dr. Edward
B. Boggs indeed presented some uncomfortable statistics which tell the
whole story. In 1871, the number of resident presbyters of the Episcopal
Church in the United States was 2,566; in 1874, it was only 2,530. Here,
then while the population increases the clergy are diminishing. A great
many reasons were suggested for the phenomenon. One thought the question
of salary was at the bottom of the evil. Another blamed mothers for not
giving their boys a taste for the ministry while they were young. A third
believed the trouble was too little prayer and too much quarrelling
over candles and ecclesiastical millinery. And more than one hinted in
the broadest terms that the ministry was discredited by having too many
fools in it.[174] The truth, however, which had been vaguely suggested by
some of the earlier speakers, was plumply told by Dr. Edward Sullivan of
Chicago. “The church,” said he, “must learn to supply the ranks of the
ministry from her own material”--that is to say, by giving the children
of the church a Christian education. He lamented the exclusion of the
Bible from some of the common schools as a national calamity--not, if we
understand him, because he has any overweening faith in the efficacy of
Bible-reading _per se_, but because he knows that when positive religious
teaching is banished from the school, the children can hardly fail to
grow up without any religious feeling whatever. “_Until we establish
parochial church schools_,” he continued, “_we can never solve this
problem._” And he might have added that if the teaching of secularism
is to be continued for a generation or two longer, the problem will
solve itself: there will be no need of preachers when there cease to be
congregations.
If such an alarming phenomenon as an actual falling off in the numbers
of the clergy were noticed in our own holy church, it would perhaps
occur to good Catholics to inquire whether the bishops were doing all
that they ought to do for the souls of their people. But the Episcopal
Congress at Philadelphia seems to have been vexed with the idea that the
bishops were doing entirely too much. Looking at the assemblage from
the outside, we cannot pretend to see the under-currents of opinion, or
to comprehend the denominational politics; but it was plain both from
the tone of the addresses in the session set apart for considering the
“Nature and Extent of Episcopal Authority” and from the manner in which
some of the remarks of the speakers were received, that a jealousy of
episcopal authority prevailed with considerable bitterness. Dr. Vinton
of Boston drew a parallel between the government of the church and the
government of the state; both were ruled by executives appointed by
law and controlled by law, and in each case the chief officer acted by
the assumed authority of those he governed. The bishops therefore, we
infer, have just as much power as the people choose to give them, and
we see no reason why the congregations should not enlarge and restrict
that power at pleasure--make a new constitution, if they wish, every
year, and treat their prelates as the savage treats his idol, which he
sets upon an altar for worship in the morning, and if things go not well
with him, kicks into the kennel at night. Indeed, since the foundation
of the Anglican Church the episcopate has always been treated with scant
ceremony. Dr. Vinton tells us that it is a reflex of the political
organization, and as that has varied a great deal in England and America,
and is not unlikely in the course of time to vary a great deal more,
we must not be surprised to find the system undergoing many strange
modifications and holding out the promise of further change indefinitely.
In the primitive church, the episcopacy was a despotism. In the Anglican
Church, it is “merely an ecclesiastical aristocracy.” In the Protestant
Episcopal Church of America, where the exigencies of politics have to be
considered, it is--well, that is just what the Congress tried in vain to
determine. For one thing, Dr. Vinton and other speakers after him laid
great stress upon the fact that its authority was carefully circumscribed
by statute, and that the church was a corporation--though whence it
derived its charter nobody was good enough to tell us. In truth, we did
not find the day’s proceedings edifying. Dr. Vinton declared that an
organic evil of the church constitution, “boding more of mischief and
sorrow to the body of Christ than any or all of the evils besides that
our age makes possible,” was the liability of bishops to grow arrogant
of power, to make their authority troublesome, to put on idle pomp, and
set themselves “in conspicuous difference from the taste, the traditions,
the educated and intelligent convictions which the providence of God has
caused to rule in this land.” Dr. Fulton of Indianapolis inveighed with
warmth against any bishop who ventured to intrude into another man’s
diocese, and remarked that “some bishops were never at home unless they
were abroad.” A bishop, continued the doctor, is subject to civil law.
He should be tried for violation of the ninth commandment if he wilfully
slander a clergyman either in or out of his own diocese. Bishops must not
affect infallibility in doctrinal utterances. They must remember that in
more than one respect they and their presbyters are equals. A bishop who
would be respected must respect the rights of other bishops--not being
an episcopal busybody in other men’s sees. Dr. Goodwin of Philadelphia
thought that what our Lord meant to have was “a moderate episcopate.”
Dr. Washburn of New York believed that even the powers granted to the
apostles were not exclusive, and that ever since the apostolic age these
powers had been gradually more and more distributed, until now, we
should think, they must be so finely divided that no fragment of them is
anywhere visible in the Episcopal Church.
Dr. J. V. Lewis convulsed the house with laughter by a speech in which he
declared that the bishops had been so “tied hand and foot by conventions
and canons that it was wonderful they had time to do anything but find
out what they must not do”; and he called upon the church to “cut those
bands and let the bishops loose.” We quote from the report of his remarks
in the _Church Journal_: “What will they do? He would tell them what they
would do. He had at home in his yard six chickens about half-grown. He
had placed among them a turkey big enough to eat any of them up. But they
all flew at him. One little fellow pecked him and spurred him savagely.
The turkey looked on in perfect astonishment, apparently; but at length
he spread out his wings and literally _sat down_ upon him. From that day
to this, whenever that turkey stirs, these chickens cannot be kept from
following him. And this is just what will happen in the church, if we
will only let our bishops loose.” All this was the cause of much innocent
hilarity among the brethren; but we fear that it was to Dr. Lewis that
the _Churchman_ referred the next week in the following solemn strain:
“It is a sad circumstance that the ministry has in it, here and there,
a professional joker and cheap story-teller and anecdote-monger, one
of the most tedious and least estimable types of foolishness that try
Christian endurance and vex religious families. It is to be hoped no
such melancholy-moving buffoon will ever propose himself as clown to the
Church Congress; and, short of that, will it be wise to confer the award
of the heartiest and loudest applause on a sort of comic pleasantry and
‘jesting not convenient’ which, at best, is outdone in its own line in
whole columns of daily newspapers? We may smile, because it cannot be
helped, but we can surely reserve our plaudits--if they must be given at
all--for that species of superiority which manifests a chaste refinement
and suits tastes that are intellectual rather than jovial.”
Clearly there was a great deal more in these essays on the limitations
of episcopal authority than met the profane eye. Who are the trespassers
upon other men’s sheepfolds, and the busybodies, and the slanderers,
and the pompous bishops, and the infallible bishops, and the bishops
who think themselves better than their presbyters, it is not for us to
inquire. Neither perhaps would it be decorous to ask how the ten or
twelve bishops in the Congress--none of whom opened their mouths during
the debate--enjoyed the session. But there is excellent reason to believe
that the presbyters had a very pleasant day, singing the opening hymn
in the morning, “Come, gracious Spirit, heavenly dove,” with peculiar
unction, and joyously dismissing their right reverend fathers in the
afternoon with the verses, “Go forth, ye heralds, in my name.”
If the bishops are in disrepute and the inferior clergy are falling
away, it can hardly be necessary to tell us that the church has no real
hold upon the people; that follows as a matter of course. Accordingly,
the most interesting of the debates were on the best methods of giving
vitality to the work of the church--on ministrations to the laboring
classes, on free churches and free preaching, on the abuses of the new
system, and on the need of something equivalent to the preaching Orders
and Congregations of our own church. Of all the papers read at the
Congress the only one which was received with what we may fairly call
enthusiasm was an essay by Mr. Francis Wells, editor of the Philadelphia
_Evening Bulletin_, on the “Parochial System and Free Preaching,” at the
close of which one of the reverend delegates jumped upon a bench and led
the assembly in three cheers. We have seen no report which gives a fair
abstract of Mr. Wells’ paper, or even explains what practical suggestions
he had to offer, so that it is impossible to understand what it was that
moved the feelings of the Congress. But if he drew a faithful picture
of the average Episcopal Church of our day he may well have startled
his audience. “The chief trouble,” he said, “lies in the spirit of
exclusiveness which eyes the fashion of the dress and warns off strangers
with a cold stare.” He was quite right in holding that the renting of
pews and the expenditure of large sums of money for the adornment of the
house of God are not necessarily obstacles to the influence of the church
over the masses. Our own experience proves that. What poor and ragged
sinner was ever repelled from a Catholic Church by imposing architecture,
or gorgeous windows, or the blazing magnificence of lighted altars, or
the strains of costly music? The rich have their pews--at least in this
country, where it is only by pew-rents that we can meet the necessary
expenses of the parish--but the most wretched beggar feels that he is
welcome at all times in the splendid temple, and he may kneel there,
feasting the senses, if he pleases, as well as refreshing the soul,
without fear that his more comfortable neighbor will stare at his humble
garments. Whatever the character of our churches, it is always the poor
who fill them. It never occurs to a Catholic that the people who pay
pew-rents acquire any proprietorship in the house of God, or have any
better right there than those who pay nothing. The sermons are never made
for the rich, and the Holy Sacrifice is offered for all indiscriminately.
But in the Episcopal Church how different it is!
Imagine the feelings of a mechanic who approaches one of the luxurious
Fifth-Avenue temples in his patched and stained working trowsers and
threadbare coat. Carriages are setting down the _haut ton_ at the door,
every lady dressed in the extreme of fashion, every gentleman carefully
arrayed by an expensive tailor. A high-priced sexton, with rather more
dignity than an average bishop, receives the distinguished arrivals just
inside the lobby, and scrutinizes strangers with the air of an expert who
has learned by long experience in the highest circles just what kind of
company every casual visitor has probably been in the habit of keeping.
The interior of the church somehow suggests a Madison-Avenue parlor,
furnished in the latest style of imitation antique. The upholstery is
a marvel of comfort. The pleasantly subdued light suits the eyes and
softens the complexions of Christians who have been up late dancing. A
decorous quiet pervades the waiting congregation, broken only by the
rustle of five-dollar silks sweeping up the aisles. Such a handsome
display of millinery can be seen nowhere else for so little money. What
is a working-man to do in such a brilliant gathering as this? He looks
timidly at the back seats, and he finds there perhaps two or three old
women, parish pensioners, Sunday-school boys, or young men who keep
near the door in order to slip out quietly when they are tired of the
services, but nobody of his class. The prosperous people all around
him listen to the choir, and the reader, and the preacher, with an
indescribable air of proprietorship in all of them. The sermon is an
elaborate essay addressed to cultivated intellects, not to his common
understanding. He goes away with the uncomfortable consciousness that
he has been intruding, and feels like a shabby and unkempt person who
has strolled by mistake into the stockholders’ row at the Italian Opera,
and been turned out by a high-toned box-keeper. “It is indeed hard to
imagine,” said _The Nation_ the other day, “anything more likely to
make religion seem repelling to a poor man than the sight of one of the
gorgeous edifices in which rich Christians nowadays try to make their
way to heaven. Working out one’s salvation clothed in the height of
the fashion, as a member of a wealthy club, in a building in which the
amplest provision is made for the gratification of all the finer senses,
must seem to a thoughtful city mechanic, for instance, something in the
nature of a burlesque. Not that the building is too good for the lofty
purpose to which it is devoted, for nobody ever gets an impression of
anything but solemn appropriateness from a great Catholic cathedral, but
that it is the property of a close corporation, who, as it might be said,
‘make up a party’ to go to the Throne of Grace, and share the expenses
equally, and fix the rate so high that only successful businessmen can
join.”
But we heed not enlarge upon the prevalence of this evil. The speakers
at the Congress recognized it frankly, and they are undoubtedly aware,
though they may not have deemed it prudent to confess, that the case is
growing more and more serious all the time. As wealth concentrates in
the large cities and habits of luxury increase, the Protestant Episcopal
Church is continually becoming colder and colder towards the poor. No
remedy that has been proposed holds out the faintest promise of stopping
this alarming decline. No remedy proposed even meets the approbation of
any considerable number of the Episcopal clergy. One speaker proposes a
greater number of free congregations, and is met by the obvious objection
that the result would be a still more lamentable separation between
rich and poor, with a different class of churches for each set. Another
recommends the bishops to send missionary preachers into every parish
where there seems to be need of their labor, but does not tell us where
the missionaries are to be found, and forgets that almost every parish
in the United States would have to be supplied in this way before the
evil could be cured. A third advises the rich and poor to meet together,
and fraternize and help each other; and a fourth calls for more zeal
all around. All these proposals are merely various ways of stating the
disease; they do not indicate remedies. Perhaps it may occur to some
people that if the Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church correspond so
closely in their outward operations, both striving to celebrate divine
worship with all possible splendor, both building costly churches and
supporting them by pew-rents, both employing highly paid choirs, both
keeping up a system of parishes, and if all the while the one gathers
people of every rank and condition into her fold, offering health and
consolation to all alike, while the other is constantly losing the
affections of the multitude and becoming a lifeless creature of forms and
fashions, the explanation of the difference after all may be that the
Holy Ghost lives and works in the one, while the other is only the device
of man.
YULE RAPS.
_A CHRISTMAS STORY._
We once saw a picture of a wide, undulating snow-landscape, overspread
with a pale rosy tint from the west, and we thought it a fancy picture of
an Arctic winter. It hung in a pretty room in a Silesian country-house.
The weather was lovely, warm but temperate; it was mid-June, and the
woods were full of wild strawberries, and the meadows of forget-me-nots.
Yet that landscape was simply Silesia in the winter; the same place,
six months later, becomes a wilderness of snow. What shall we say of
Mecklenburg, then, so much farther to the north of Silesia? But even
there winter brings merriment; and as in these snow-bound countries there
is less work to be got through in the winter, their people associate the
ideas of pleasure and holiday with the cold rather than the warm weather.
In Mecklenburg spring, summer, and autumn mean work--ploughing, sowing,
haying, harvesting; winter means fun and frolic, peasants’ dances,
farmers’ parties, weddings, christenings, harvest-homes, Christmas, New
Year’s, and Epiphany presents, gatherings of friends, fireside talk,
innocent games, and general merriment.
In a little village in this province the house of Emanuel Köhler was
famous for its jollity. Here were old customs well kept up, yet always
with decorum and a regard to higher matters. Emanuel was virtually
master of the estate of Stelhagen, the absentee owner of which was a gay
young officer who never wrote to his agent, except for a new supply
of money. Clever and enlightened an agriculturist as old Köhler was,
it was sometimes difficult for him to send the required sums, and yet
have enough to farm the estate to his satisfaction. In the language of
the country, he was called the inspector, and his house, also according
to the local custom, was a kind of informal agricultural school. At
the time of our story he had four young men under him--who were in all
respects like the apprentices of the good old time--and two of his own
relatives, his son and his nephew. His only daughter was busy helping
her mother, and learning to be as efficient a housekeeper as the young
men to be first-rate farmers; and this nucleus of young society, added
to the good Köhler’s hearty joviality and the known good-cheer always
provided by Frau Köhler, naturally made the large, cosey, rambling
house a pleasant rendezvous for the neighborhood. The Köhler household
was a host in itself, yet it always loved to be reinforced on festive
occasions by the good people of the village and farms within ten miles
round. So also the children, whether poor or pretty well off, were all
welcome at old Emanuel’s, and knew the way to the Frau Inspectorin’s
pantry as well as they knew the path to the church or the school. All the
servant-girls in the neighborhood wanted to get a place in this house,
but there was scarcely ever a vacancy, unless one of the dairy-maids or
the house-girls married. Frau Köhler and her daughter did all the kitchen
work themselves, and the latter, a thoughtful girl, though she was only
fifteen, studied books and maps between-whiles. But her studies never
interfered with the more necessary knowledge that a girl should have
when, as Rika,[175] she has to depend upon herself for everything. In
the country, in the Mecklenburg of even a very few years ago, everything
was home-made, and a supply of things from the large town twenty or
thirty miles off was the event of a life-time. Such things came as
wedding-gifts; and though fancy things came every Christmas, even they
were carefully and sacredly kept as tokens of that miraculous, strange,
bewildering world outside, in which people wore their silk dresses every
day, and bought everything they wanted at large shops a few steps from
their own houses. Frau Köhler often wondered what other women did who
had no farm-house to manage, no spinning, or knitting, or cooking, or
dairy-work to do; and when her daughter Rika suggested that they probably
read and studied, she shrugged her shoulders and said: “Take care, child;
women ought to attend to women’s work. Studying is a man’s business.”
The honest soul was a type of many an old-fashioned German house-mother,
of whose wisdom it were well that some of our contemporaries could avail
themselves; and when Rika gently reminded her of the story of Martha and
Mary, she would energetically reply:
“Very well; but take my word for it, child, there was a woman more
blessed than _that_ Mary, and one who was nearer yet to her Lord; and
we do not hear of _her_ neglecting her house. I love to think of that
house at Nazareth as just a model of household cleanliness and comfort.
You know, otherwise, it could not have been a fitting place for _Him_;
for though he chose poverty, he must needs have surrounded himself with
spotless purity.”
And Rika, as humble and docile as she was thoughtful, saw in this
reverent and practical surmise a proof that it is not learning that comes
nearest to the heart of truth, but that clearer and directer knowledge
which God gives to “babes and sucklings.”
This particular Christmas there was much preparation for the family
festival. The kitchen was in a ferment for a week, and mighty
bakings took place; gingerbread and cake were made, and various
confectionery-work was done; for Frau Köhler expected a friend of her
own early home to come and stay with her this last week of the year.
This was the good old priest who had baptized her daughter; for neither
mother nor daughter were natives of Mecklenburg, though the latter had
grown up there, and had never, since she was six months old, gone beyond
the limits of the large estate which her father administered. Frau Köhler
was a Bavarian by birth, and had grieved very much when her Mecklenburg
husband had taken her to this northern land, where his position and wages
were so good as to make it his duty to abide and bring up his family. But
the worthy old creature had done a wonderful deal of good since she had
been there, and kept up her faith as steadfastly as ever she had at home.
Frederika had been her treasure and her comfort; and between the mother’s
intense, mediæval firmness of belief, and the child’s naturally deep and
thoughtful nature, the little farm-maiden had grown up a rare combination
of qualities, and a model for the young Catholic womanhood of our stormy
times. The old priest whom Frau Köhler had looked up to before her
marriage as her best friend, and whom Rika had been taught to revere from
her babyhood, had been very sick, and was obliged to leave his parish
for a long holiday and rest. His former parishioner was anxious that
he should see Christmas kept in the old-fashioned northern style, more
characteristic than the Frenchified southern manners would now allow,
even in her remote native village. Civilization carries with it the
pick-axe and the rule; and when young girls begin to prefer Manchester
prints and French bonnets to homespun and straw hats, most of the old
customs slip away from their homes.
In the sturdy Mecklenburg of twenty years ago, even after the temporary
stir of 1848, things were pretty much as they had been for centuries, and
it was Emanuel’s pride that his household should be, if needful, the last
stronghold of the good old usages. He heartily acquiesced in his wife’s
invitation to the southern guest, and resolved to have the best Christmas
that had been known in the country since he had undertaken the care of
the Stelhagen estate. In truth, he lived like a patriarch among his
work-people; his laborers and their families were models of prosperity
and content, and the children of all the neighborhood wished he were
their grandfather. Indeed, he was godfather to half the village babies
born during his stay there.
The sleighs of the country were the people’s pride. Some were plain
and strong, because their owners were not rich enough to adorn them,
but others were quite a curiosity to the visitor from the south. They
partook of the same quaintness as the old yellow family coaches that
took the farmers to harvest-homes and weddings before the early snows
came on. Lumbering, heavy-wheeled vehicles these were, swinging on high
like a cradle tied to a couple of saplings in a storm; capacious as
the house-mother’s apron-pockets on a baking day; seventy years old at
least, barring the numerous patchings and mendings, new lining or new
wheel, occasionally vouchsafed to the venerable representative of the
family dignity. The sleighs were much gayer and a little less antiquated,
because oftener used, and therefore oftener worn out; besides, there were
fashions in sleighs even in this remote place--fashions indigenous to
the population, each individual of which was capable of some invention
when sleighs were in question. On Christmas Eve, long before it grew
dark, many of these pretty or curious conveyances clattered up to the
farm-house door. Some were laden with children two rows deep, all wrapped
in knitted jackets, blankets, boas, etc., and here and there covered with
a fur cap or furred hood; for knitting in this neighborhood supplied all
with warm winter wraps, even better than woven or machine-made stuffs do
nowadays. There were no single sleighs, no tiny, toy-like things made
to display the rich toilet of the occupant and the skill of the fast
driver by her side; here all were honest family vehicles, full of rosy
faces like Christmas apples; hearty men and women who at three-score
were almost as young as their grandchildren on their bridal day; and
young men and maidens who were not afraid to dance and move briskly in
their plain, loose, home-spun and home-made clothes, nor to fall in
love with German downrightness and honest, practical intentions. Most
of these sleighs were red, picked out with black, or black liberally
sprinkled with red; some were yellow and black, some yellow and blue,
and in most the robe and cushions were of corresponding colors. Some of
these robes had eagles embroidered in coarse patterns and thick wool,
while others were of a pattern something like those used for bed-quilts;
and some bore unmistakable witness to the thrift of the house-mother,
and were skilfully pieced together out of carpet, curtain, blanket, and
dress remnants, the whole bordered with some inexpensive fur. One or two
sleighs bore a sort of figure-head--the head of a deer, or a fox, or a
hawk--carved and let into the curling part of the front; while one party,
who were gazed upon with mingled admiration and disapproval, went so far
as to trail after them, for three or four feet behind the sleigh, and
sweeping up the snow in their wake, a thick scarlet cloth of gorgeous
appearance, but no very valuable texture. This was the doing of a young
fellow who had lately been reading one or two romances of chivalry, and
been much pleased with the “velvet housings of the horses, sweeping the
ground as the knight rode to the king’s tournament.” His indulgent old
mother and admiring sisters had but faintly remonstrated, and this was
the consequence. The horses were not less bedecked than the vehicles.
Silver bells hung from their harness and belted their bodies in various
places; shining plates of metal and knobs driven into the leather made
them as gay as circus-horses; while horse-cloths of variegated pattern
were rolled up under the feet of their masters, ready for use whenever
they stopped on the road.
Emanuel himself had gone to the nearest town at which a stage-coach
stopped, to welcome his wife’s friend and special guest, and entertained
him with a flow of agricultural information and warm eulogy of the
country through which they were speeding on their way home. He arrived
at Stelhagen before the rush of country visitors, and was triumphantly
taken through every part of the well-kept farm, while his meal was
being prepared by Rika and the maids. But more than all, Frau Köhler,
in her delight, actually made him “free” of the sacred, secret chamber
where stood the _Christbaum_, already laden but unlighted, among its
attendant tables and dishes. The old man was as innocently charmed as a
seven-year-old child; it reminded him so of his own Christmas-tree in
days when the simple customs of Germany were still unimpaired, and when
it was the fashion to give only really useful things, with due regard to
the condition and needs of the recipients.
“But at the feasts to which my people ask me now,” said he, “I see
children regaled with a multitude of unwholesome, colored _bonbons_ in
boxes that cost quite as much as the contents, and servants given cheap
silks or paste jewelry, and the friends or the master and mistress
themselves loaded with pretty but useless knick-knacks, gilded toys that
cost a great deal and make more show than their use warrants. Times are
sadly changed, Thekla, even since you were married.”
“Well, Herr Pfarrer, I have had little chance, and less wish, to see
the change; and up here I think we still live as Noah’s sons after they
came out of the ark,” said good Frau Köhler, with a broad smile at her
own wit. As the day wore on, she and Rika left the _Pfarrer_ (_curé_)
to Emanuel’s care, and again busied themselves about the serious
coming festivity. She flew around, as active as a fat sparrow, with
a dusting-cloth under her arm, whisking off with nervous hand every
speck of dust on the mantel-piece or among the few books which lay
conspicuously on the table in the best room; giving her orders to the
nimble maids, welcoming the families of guests, and specially petting
the children. Emanuel took the men under his protection, and gave them
tobacco and pipes, and talked farming to them, while his own young
home-squad whispered in corners of the coming tree and supper.
At last Rika came out from the room where the mystery was going on, and,
opening the door wide, let a flood of light into the dark apartment
beyond. There was a regular blaze. The large tree stood on a low table,
and reached nearly up to the ceiling. There were only lights, colored
ribbons, and gilded walnuts hung upon it, but it quite satisfied the
expectation of the good folk around it. Round the room were tables and
stands of all kinds, crowded together, and barely holding all the dishes
apportioned to each member of the party. The guests had secretly brought
or sent their mutual presents; one family generally taking charge of its
neighbor’s gifts, and _vice-versa_, that none might suspect the nature
of their own. The tree, too, was a joint contribution of the several
families; all had sent in tapers and nuts, and this it was that made it
so full of bright things and necessitated its being so tall.
On the middle table, under the tree itself, were dishes for the Köhler
household, each one having a liberal allowance of apples, nuts, and
gingerbread. Besides these, there were parcels, securely tied, laid by
the dishes, and labelled with the names of their unconscious owners.
Köhler was seized upon by his wife and daughter before anyone else was
allowed to go forward--for in this old-fashioned neighborhood the head of
the house is still considered in the light of an Abraham--and a compact
parcel was put into his hands by Rika, while Thekla kissed him with
hearty loudness. Next came the guest, whom Rika led to the prettiest
china dish, and presented with a small, tempting-looking packet. Leaving
him to open it at his leisure, she joined her young friends, and a
good-natured scramble now began, each looking for his own name in some
familiar handwriting, finding it, and opening the treasure with the
eagerness of a child. It would be impossible to describe every present
that thus came to view; but though many were pretty and elaborate, none
were for mere show. Presently Frau Köhler was seen to take possession of
her husband, and, pulling off his coat, made him try on the dressing-gown
he had just drawn from his parcel. She turned him round like a doll, and
clapped her hands in admiration at the perfect fit; then danced around to
the other end of the room, and called out to the maids:
“Lina! Bettchen! it is your turn now; you have not been forgotten. Those
are your dishes where the silver dollars are sticking in the apples.”
The maids opened their parcels, and each found a bright, soft, warm
dress, crimson and black. Then came George, the man who did most of the
immediate work round the house, and found a bright red vest with steel
buttons in his parcel. Frau Köhler was busy looking at other people’s
things, when her husband slipped a neat, long packet on her dish, and,
as she turned and saw the addition, she uttered an exclamation of joy.
Rika helped her to unfold the stiff, rustling thing, when it turned out
to be a black silk dress. Not every housewife in those days had one, and
her last was nearly worn out. Then the old priest came forward to show
the company his Christmas box; and what do you think it was? There was no
doubt as to where it came from. It was a set of missal-markers, and in
such taste as was scarcely to be expected in that time and neighborhood.
Rika had designed it, and her mother had worked it; but many an anxious
debate had there been over it, as the Frau Inspectorin had been at first
quite vexed at what she called its plainness. It was composed of five
thick _gros-grain_ ribbons, two inches wide and fifteen long. There was
a red, a green, a white, a purple, and a black ribbon; and on each was
embroidered a motto--on the red and green, in gold; on the white, in red;
and on the black and purple, in silver. The letters were German, though
the mottoes were in Latin, and each of the five referred to one of these
events: our Lord’s birth, death, Resurrection, and Ascension, and the
Coming of the Holy Ghost. At the end of each ribbon, instead of fringe
or tassels, hung a cross of pure silver, into the ring of which the
ribbon was loosely gathered. Every one crowded round this novel Christmas
gift, and examined it with an admiration equally gratifying to the giver
and the receiver. But Emanuel’s jolly voice soon broke the spell by
saying:
“These fine presents are very delightful to receive, no doubt, and the
women-folk would not have been happy without some such thing; but we are
all mortal, and I have not forgotten that my guest has feet and hands,
and needs warmth and comfort as much as we of grosser clay.”
And with this he thrust a large parcel into the _Pfarrer’s_ arms. Every
one laughed and helped him to open it; every one was curious to see its
contents. They were, indeed, of a most substantial and useful kind: a
foot-muff of scarlet cloth, lined and bordered with fur, and a pair of
huge sealskin gloves.
Scarcely had the parcel been opened when a hum of measured sound was
heard outside, and presently a Christmas carol was distinctly audible.
Everyone knew the words, and many joined in the song before the singers
became visible. Then the door opened, and a troop of children came in,
dressed in warm white furs and woollen wrappings, and carrying tapers and
fir-branches in their hands. They sang a second carol, quaint and rustic
in its words, but skilfully set to anything but archaic music, and then,
in honor of their southern guest, they began _the_ song of the evening,
a few stanzas from the “Great Hymn” to the Blessed Virgin, by the
Minnesinger, Gottfried of Strasburg, the translation of which, according
to Kroeger, runs thus:
XXV.
“God thee hath clothed with raiments seven;
On thy pure body, drawn from heaven,
Hath put them even
When thou wast first created.
The first one Chastity is named;
The second is as Virtue famed;
The third is claimed
As Courtesy, well mated;
The fourth dress is Humility;
The fifth is known as Pity;
The sixth one, Faith, clings close to thee;
The seventh, noble Modesty,
Leads gratefully
Thee in the path of duty.
XXVII.
“Thou sun, thou moon, thou star so fair,
God took thee from his own side there,
Here to prepare
The birth of Christ within thee.
For that his loved Child and thine,
Which is our life and life’s sunshine,
Our bread and wine,
To stay chaste, he did win thee;
So that sin’s thorns could never touch
Thy fruitful virtue’s branches.
His burning love for thee did vouch,
He kept thee from all sins that crouch:
A golden couch,
Secured by his love’s trenches.
XLVII.
…
“Rejoice now, thou salvation’s throne,
That thou gavest birth to Him who won
Our cause, thy Son,
Our Saviour and our blessing.
…
XLVIII.
“Rejoice now, O thou sunshine mild,
That on thy blessed breasts there smiled
God’s little Child--
Its earthly destination.
Rejoice that then drew near to thee
From foreign lands the wise kings three,
Noble and free,
To bring their adoration
To thee and to that blessed Child,
With many a graceful off’ring.
Rejoice now, that the star beguiled
And to that place their pathway smiled
Where, with thy Child,
They worshipped thy sweet suff’ring.”
“You are not so utterly unknowing of all gentle and learned pursuits as
you would have had me believe,” said the _Pfarrer_ to Frau Köhler. “It
is not every child in Bavaria that could sing so well this Old-World
poem, so graceful in its rhyming and so devout in its allusions. Our
old XIIth-century poetry, the most national--_i.e._, peculiar to our
country--is too much superseded by noisy modern rhymes or sentimental
ballads copied from foreign models. Have you any unknown scholar among
your farmers and agents, who, you told me, made up a hearty but not a
learned society here?”
“Well,” said Frau Köhler, “there is the school-master, Heldmann, who is
always poring over old useless books, but never can have a good dinner
unless his friends send it to him, poor man! He is a bachelor, and
cannot afford to have a housekeeper. And then there is one of our young
gentlemen, who Köhler says is always in the clouds, and who spends all
his spare time with Heldmann, while the other boys spend theirs with
their pretty, rosy neighbors. By the way, Heldmann is coming to-night;
but he said he could not come till late, as he had some important
business which would detain him for an hour or two.”
“You forget our Rika, mother,” said Emanuel, not heeding the last part
of his wife’s sentence; “she is as wise as any of them, though she says
so little. She knows all the old legends and poetry, and more besides, I
warrant.”
“Rika designed that missal-marker,” said the Frau Inspectorin proudly
(she had found out, since it had been so admired, that her daughter’s
instinct had guided her aright in the design).
But Rika, hearing her name mentioned, had slipped away among the
white-wrapped children, and was laying their tapers and fir-branches
away, preparatory to giving them cakes and fruit. This was quite a
ceremony, and when they were ready Frau Köhler, handing the large dish
of nuts to the _Pfarrer_, begged him to distribute them, while she took
charge of the gingerbread and Rika of the apples.
It was funny to see the solemn expectancy with which the children
brought out dishes, mugs, pitchers, etc., in which to receive these
Christmas gifts. Some of the girls held out their aprons, as more
convenient and capacious receptacles than anything else they could lay
hands on. One boy brought a large birthday cup, and another a wooden
milk-bowl; another a small churn, while a fourth had carried off his
father’s peck-measure, and a fifth calmly handed up a corn-sack, which he
evidently expected to get filled to the brim. As Frau Köhler came to one
of the children, she said:
“Fritz, I saw you in the orchard last autumn stealing our apples. Now,
naughty boys must not expect to get apples at Christmas if they take them
at other times; so, Rika, don’t give him any. He shall have one piece of
gingerbread, though.” A piteous disclaimer met this sentence; but the
_Pfarrer_ thrust a double quantity of nuts into the culprit’s basket, and
passed on. Then once again Frau Köhler stopped and said; “Johann, didn’t
I see you fighting with another boy in the churchyard two weeks ago,
and told you that Santa Claus would forget you when he came to fill the
stockings on Christmas night? I shall not give you any gingerbread.”
“Franz knows we made it up again,” whined the boy, and Franz, with a
roguish look, peeped out from his place in the row and said: “Yes, we
did, Frau Inspectorin”; so both got their gingerbread. At last, this
distribution being over, the children, laden with their gifts, went home
to their own various firesides, not without many thanks to the “stranger
within the gates” and his parting reminder, as he showed them the stars:
“Look up at God’s own Christmas-tree, lighted up with thousands of
tapers, children, and at the smooth, white snow spread over the fields.
That is the white table-cloth which he has spread for the beautiful gifts
which spring, and summer, and autumn are going to bring you, all in his
own good time.”[176]
Then came another batch of visitors--the old, sick, and infirm people of
the village; the spinning-women, the broom-tyers, the wooden bowl and
spoon carvers, and the makers of wooden shoes; and some who could no
longer work, but had been faithful and industrious in their time. They
had something of the old costume on: the men wore blue yarn stockings and
stout gray knee-breeches (they had left their top-boots outside; for the
snow was deep and soft, and they needed them all the winter and through
most of the spring); and the women had large nodding caps and black silk
handkerchiefs folded across their bosoms. Each of these old people got a
large loaf of plain cake and some good stout flannel; and these things,
according to the local etiquette, the inspector himself delivered to
them as the representative of his young master. This distribution was
an old custom on the Stelhagen estate, and, though the present owner
was careless enough in many things, he wished this usage to be always
kept up. Even if he had not, it is not likely that as long as Köhler
was inspector the old people would not have been able to rely on the
customary Christmas gift. After this some bustle occurred, and two or
three people went and stationed themselves outside the door. Presently
the expectant company within were startled by a loud rap, and the door
flew open, a parcel was flung in, and a voice cried out:
“Yule rap!”
This was a pair of slippers for the inspector. No one knew where they
came from; no one had sent them. Yule raps are supposed to be magical,
impersonal causes of tangible effects; so every one looked innocent and
astonished, as became good Mecklenburgers under Christmas circumstances.
“Yule rap!” again, and the door opened a second time; a smoking-cap,
embroidered with his initials, was evolved out of a cumbrous packet by
one of the young apprentices, and scarcely had he put it on than another
thundering knock sounded on the door.
“Yule rap!” was shouted again, and in flew a heavy package. It was a
book, with illustrations of travel scenes in the East, and was directed
to Rika.
“Yule rap!”
This time it was only a little square envelope, with a ticket referring
Frau Köhler to another ticket up in the bureau drawer in her bedroom; but
when one of the boys found it, that referred again to another ticket in
the cellar; and when another boy brought this to light, it mysteriously
referred her to her husband’s pocket. Here, at last, the hidden thing was
revealed--an embroidered collar, and a pair of larger cuffs to match.
Köhler had no idea what sprite had put it there, so he said.
“Yule rap!” and this time it was for the guest--a black velvet skull-cap,
warm and clinging. Then came various things, all heralded by the same
warning cry of “Yule rap!” and a knock at the door, generally in George’s
strong voice. The two maids got the packages ready, and peeped in at
the keyhole to see when it was time to vary the sensation by throwing in
another present. Again, a breakfast-bell came rolling in, ringing as it
bounded on, with just a few bands of soft stuff and silver paper muffling
its sound. Once a large meerschaum pipe was laid gently at the threshold
of the door, and one of the apprentices fetched it as carefully. Then
a violin was pushed through the half-open door, and the eager face of
the one for whom it was intended peeped anxiously over his neighbor’s
shoulder, wondering if any one else were the happy destined one, and as
much surprised as delighted when he found it was himself. That violin has
since been heard in many a large and populous town, and, though its owner
did not become as world-known as Paganini or Sivori, he did not love his
art less faithfully and exclusively. We cannot enumerate all the gifts
which Yule brought round this year; but before the evening was over, a
different voice cried out the magic words, “Yule rap!” and the door being
slightly opened and quickly closed again, a tiny, white, silky dog stood
trembling on the carpet. Rika jumped up and ran to take it in her arms;
then pulling open the door, “Herr Heldmann! Herr Heldmann!” she cried. “I
know it is you!”
The schoolmaster came forward, his rough face glowing with the cold
through which he had just come.
“I promised you a dog, Rika,” he said rather awkwardly, “but they would
not let me have it till this very day, and I had no time to go for it but
this evening. I kept it under my coat all the time; so it is quite warm.
It is only two months old.”
Rika was in ecstasies. She declared this was worth all her Christmas
presents, and then rewarded Herr Heldmann by telling him how well
the children had done their part, and how delightfully surprised the
_Pfarrer_ had been. The two men were soon in a deep conversation on
subjects dear and familiar to both, and the company gradually dissolved
again into little knots and groups. Many took their leave, as their
homes were distant and they did not wish to be too late; but for all an
informal supper was laid in the vast kitchen, and by degrees most of
the good things on the table were sensibly diminished. The host’s wife
and daughter, and the Herr Pfarrer, with half a dozen others and a few
children, did not leave the Christmas-tree, whose tapers were constantly
attended to and replaced when necessary. Other “Christmas candles” were
also lighted--tall columns of yellow wax, made on purpose for this
occasion. As the household and its inmates were left to themselves,
the children began asking for their accustomed treat--the stories that
all children have been fond of since the world began. No land is so
rich in the romance of childhood as Germany, both north and south.
There everything is personified, and as an English writer lately said,
wonderful histories are connected with the fir-trees in the forests,
the beloved and venerated _Christbaum_. “Though it be yet summer,
the child sees in fancy the beautiful _Weihnachtsbaum_, adorned with
sparkling things as the Gospel, is adorned with promises and hopes; rich
in gifts as the three kings were rich; pointing to heaven as the angel
pointed; bright as those very heavens were bright with silver-winged
messengers; crowned with gold as the Word was crowned; odorous like the
frankincense: sparkling like the star; spreading forth its arms, full of
peace and good-will on every side, holding out gifts and promises for
all.”
_Weihnacht_, the blessed, the hallowed, the consecrated night, is the
child-paradise of Germany. That land of beautiful family festivals has
given Christmas a double significance, and merged into its memories all
the graceful, shadowy legends of the dead mythology of the Fatherland.
The German child is reared in the midst of fairy-tales, which are only
truths translated into child-language. Besides the old standard ones,
every neighborhood has its own local tales, every family its own new-born
additions or inventions. Every young mother, herself but a step removed
from childhood, with all her tender imaginations still stirring, and her
child-days lifted into greater beauty because they are but just left
behind, makes new stories for her little ones, and finds in every flower
a new fairy, in every brook a new voice.
And yet the old tales still charm the little ones, and the yearly coming
of King Winter brings the old, worn stories round again. So Emanuel
Köhler told the fairy-tale which the children had listened to every
Christmas with ever-new delight, about the journey of King Winter from
his kingdom at the North Pole, and how he put on his crown with tall
spikes of icicles, and wrapped himself in his wide snow-mantle, which to
him is as precious and as warm as ermine.
“And now,” said the host, “there is some one here who can tell you a far
more beautiful story than mine. Some One, greater than the Winter-King,
comes too every year--a snow-Child, the white Christ whom our ancestors,
the old Norse and Teutonic warriors, learned to see and adore, where
they had only seen and worshipped the God of War and the God of Thunder
before. Ask him to tell you a story.”
And the old, white-haired _Pfarrer_ stroked the head of the child nearest
to him, as the little one looked shyly up into his face, mutely endorsing
Emanuel’s appeal. He told them that they must already know the story of
the first Christmas night, and so he would only tell them how the news
that the angels told the shepherds on the hills came long centuries
after to others as pure-minded as the shepherds, and by means almost
as wonderful. He repeated to them from memory the words of an English
prose-poet, which he said he had loved ever since he came across them,
and which made the picture he best loved to talk on at Christmas-time:
“That little infant frame, white as a snow-drop on the lap of winter,
light almost as a snow-flake on the chill night air, smooth as the
cushioned drift of snow which the wind has lightly strewn outside the
walls of Bethlehem, is at this moment holding within itself, as if it
were of adamantine rock, the fires of the beatific light.… The little
white lily is blooming below the greater one; an offshoot of its stem,
and a faithful copy, leaf for leaf, petal for petal, white for white,
powdered with the same golden dust, meeting the morning with the same
fragrance, which is like no other than their own!”[177]
There was a more marvellous tale than any they had heard about
talking-flowers. The _Christkind_ was a flower, and his blessed Mother
was a flower--holy lilies in the garden of God, blossoming rods like
Aaron’s, fruitful roots, stately cedars, and fruit-giving palm-trees.
It was a very happy thing to know and feel all this, as we do; but
many millions of men know nothing of it, and centuries ago even our
forefathers in these forests knew nothing of it. “But,” he continued,
“there was a distant island, where men of our race lived, which did
not receive the faith till long after Germany and France and Britain
were Christian, and even had cathedrals and cloisters and schools
in abundance. It was two hundred years after Charlemagne, who was a
Frankish, and therefore a German, sovereign, founded the Palatine schools
and conferred with the learned English monk, Alcuin. This distant, pagan
island was Iceland. The Norsemen there were a wild, fierce, warlike
people, free from any foreign government, and just the kind of heroes
that their old mythology represented them as becoming in their future,
disembodied life. They had their scalds, or saga-men, their bards, who
were both poets and historians, who kept up their spirit by singing wild
songs about their ancestors and the battles they had won. They were all
pagans, and thought the forgiveness of injuries very mean. Well, one day,
the eve of Yule-tide, when it was terribly cold and cheerless, an old
scald sat in his rough hut, with a flickering light before him, chanting
one of his wild, heathen songs, and his daughter, a beautiful girl, sat
at the plank table near him, busy with some woman’s work. During an
interval of his song she raised her eyes and said to him:
“‘Father, there must be something beyond all that--something greater and
nobler.’
“‘Why, child,’ said the old man, with a kind of impatient wonder, ‘why
should you think so? Many things different there may be, just as there
are different kinds of men, and different kinds of beasts, and different
kinds of plants; some for mastery and some for thraldom; some for the
chase, and some for the kitchen or the plough; some for incantations
and sacrifices, and some for common food. But anything nobler than our
history there could not be; and as for our religion, if there were
anything different, or even better, it would not suit our people, and so
would be no concern of ours.’
“‘But if it were true, father, and ours not true, what then?’
“‘Why ask the question, child? What was good enough for the wise and
brave Northmen who fled here that they might be free to fight and worship
according to their fancy, is good enough for their descendants.’
“‘But you know yourself, father,’ persisted the maiden, ‘that those
whom our poetical traditions call gods were men, heroes and patriots
who taught our forefathers various arts, and guided them safely across
deserts and through forests in their long, long migration--but still
only men. Our chieftains of to-day might as well become gods to our
great-grandchildren, if the old leaders have become so to us. Wise as
they were, they could not command the frozen seas to open a way for their
ships, nor make the sun rise earlier in the long winter, nor compel the
cutting ice-wind to cease. If they could not do such things, they must
have been very far from gods.’
“‘It is true,’ said the old man, ‘that those great chieftains were, in
the dim ages we can scarcely count back to, men like us; but the gods
who taught them those very arts took them up to live with them as long as
their own heaven might last, and made them equal to themselves. You know
even Paradise itself is to come to an end some day.’
“‘So our legends say, father; but that, too, makes it seem as if these
gods were only another order of mortal beings, stronger but not better
than we are, and hiding from us the true, changeless heaven far above
them. For surely that which changes cannot be divine. And then our
legends say that evil is to triumph when heaven and earth come to an end.
True, they say there will be a renewal of all things after that, and
that, no doubt, means that good will be uppermost; very likely all the
things spoken of in our Eddas are only signs of other things which we
could not understand.’
“The daughter continued these questionings and speculations, the scald
answering them as best he could.
“He had listened with evident admiration and approval to her impassioned
speech, but he was willing to test her faith in her own womanhood to the
utmost. She now seemed wrapt in her own thoughts, but after a short pause
said:
“‘It would not be another’s inspiration in which I should believe; it
would be a message from Him who has put this belief already into my
heart. Some One greater than all has spoken to my inmost heart, and I am
ready to believe; but the messenger that is to put it into words and tell
me what to do has not come.’
“There was a silence, and the wind and the sea roared without. The
old man shaded the flickering light with his hand, and gazed at his
daughter, who was sitting with her hands clasped in her lap. He thought
that she herself must have received some divine illumination; for the
Norsemen believed in the prophetic gifts of some of their women. His
own mind, more cultivated than that of the warrior’s, saw through the
symbolic character of many of the very myths he sang, and tended vaguely
to belief in a higher and hidden circle of things infinite, true, and
eternal. But then the northern mind was naturally simple, not prone to
metaphysical distinctions, not analytical and subtle, dividing as with
the sword that pierceth between soul and spirit; and the old man saw no
use in raising theological problems for which he could offer no rational
solution, save through the dreams of a young girl. Presently the old man
rose, shaking off his meditations, and said:
“‘It is time for me to go to the Yule-night festival, and I shall have
a stormy trudge of it to the castle. I must leave you alone here till
to-morrow night. But, my child, I know that there is safety for the
scald’s daughter wherever she may be; the very sea would not hurt her,
and the wildest men would kneel before her; so farewell, and a father’s
blessing be upon you.’
“His daughter rose and fetched his cloak and staff, wrapped the former
around him, and fastened it over the rude musical instrument that
answered the purpose of lyre and harp; but I am not very learned in such
things, and cannot tell you exactly what it was. The young girl stood
long on the threshold of the hut, shading the light, and looking out
after her father into the darkness. The wind was sharp and icy, and
blew from the frozen sea. As she held the light, she thought she heard
a cry come from the direction of the sea. She lingered before closing
the door, although the wind was very chill; for the cry seemed repeated,
and she thought it was a human voice calling. A moment’s reflection told
her it could not be so; for the whole sea was frozen for miles outward,
and no boat or wreck could come so near land. She sat down again to her
work, and mused on the conversation she had held with her father. He had
studied their national books all his life, and she was not yet twenty. He
must know best. Was she likely to be right? She had little experience of
the way in which the old system worked; only her own dreams and fancies
showed her any other possibility; and yet--she could not shake off the
thought: she thirsted for another revelation. The far-off, unknown
Godhead must have some means of communicating with men; why should he not
speak to her, who so passionately and blindly longed for a message, a
command, from him?
“The cry from the sea sounded again. Surely, this time there could be
no mistake; the voice was human, and it had come nearer since she had
left the door. She took up the light again, and went outside, shouting
as loud as she could in return. She was answered, and a strange awe came
upon her as she heard this cry. Was it that of a man or a spirit? The
latter supposition seemed to her unsophisticated mind quite as likely
as the former, but it did not frighten her, as it would most of her
countrywomen. She went in again, wrapped a thick fur cloak around her,
and, taking another on her arm, sallied out once more with another
stronger light. It was barely possible to keep the resinous torch
alight, and she looked anxiously out towards the sea, to try and catch
some glimpse of a human figure. The cries came again at intervals; but
she knew that in the clear air a seemingly near sound might yet be far
distant. She had to walk briskly up and down the shore, in the beaten
path between walls of snow, to keep herself warm, and occasionally she
lifted the flaring torch and waved it as a signal. She could do no more,
but she longed to see her unknown visitor, and to go out to meet him on
the frozen waters. Was it some wrecked sailor, who had clambered from
ice-floe to ice-floe, in the desperate hope of reaching land before he
died of cold and hunger, or some unearthly messenger from an invisible
world? If he were a mere man, from what coast could he have drifted.
No Icelander would be out at this time and place; it was Yule-tide,
and there were no wandering boats out among the ice-cliffs and floes.
At last she thought she could discern a shadowy form, blacker than the
surrounding darkness, but surely no human form; it was like a moving
cross, one upright shape, and one laid across near the top, and both
dark and compact. But the cry was repeated, though in a more assured
and joyful tone, and the maiden waited with bated breath, wondering
what this marvel could mean. A field of unbroken ice stretched between
her and the advancing figure, which now hastened its steps, and came on
like a swift-sailing bird, cleaving the darkness. She thought she could
distinguish a human face above the junction of the two arms of the cross,
and she held up the light, still uncertain what kind of visitant this
approaching form might be. At last it flashed upon her that it was a
man bearing a child. But why so rigid? Why did he not hug him close to
his bosom to keep him warm, to keep him alive? Was the child dead? And
a shuddering awe came upon her, as she thought of its dead white face
upturned to heaven, and of the faithful man who had not forsaken it, or
left it to the seals and wolves on the ice, or buried it in the chill
waters beneath the ice-floes. What a cold it must have struck to the
heart of the man carrying it; how his hands must be well-nigh frozen in
supporting this strange burden!
“She hardly knew whether she was still imagining what might be, or
witnessing real movements, when the figure came straight up to her, and,
stooping, laid the child at her feet. She lowered the torch, and, as the
glare fell on the little face, she saw that it was no breathing one;
the man had sunk down beside it, hardly able to stir, now the supreme
effort was over and his end was accomplished. She dropped the cloak she
held over the little body, and caught up a handful of snow, wherewith
she energetically rubbed the face and hands of the stranger, then half
dragged, half supported him to the door of the hut. He had only spoken
once, just as he dropped at her feet, but she did not understand him:
he spoke in a foreign tongue. Once more she went out and brought in the
stiffened, frozen body of the child, which she laid on a fur robe just
outside the hut; for it was warm within the small, confined dwelling. It
was an hour before the stranger’s eye told her that her simple, quick
remedies had succeeded. He was not very tall, but immensely strong and
powerful, and there was a fire in his dark gray eye that gave the clew
to his strange, weird pilgrimage over the ice-floes. His hair was dark
brown, with a reddish tinge, but already mixed with a few gray streaks;
it had been shorn close to his head some time since, as appeared from its
irregular growth at present. Beneath his cloak he wore a long black robe,
with a leathern girdle round the waist. The child was very beautiful,
even in death; his eyes were closed, but his black, curling hair hung
round his neck, and the lips had a sweet though somewhat proud outline.
The scald’s daughter set some simple food before her silent guest, and
made him a sign to eat. He was evidently very hungry, but before he
began he moved his lips and made the sign of the cross on his forehead,
lips, and breast. She asked him in her own language what that ceremony
meant, not hoping to make him understand her speech, but trusting to her
inquiring looks for some explanatory sign that she might interpret as
best she could to herself. To her surprise, he answered in a few, slow,
labored words, not in Icelandic to be sure, but in some dialect akin
to it; for she could make out the meaning. It was, in fact, the Norse
dialect that was spoken in the Orkney Islands, but she did not know that.
As he spoke, her guest pointed upwards, and she knew that he referred
to God. A great longing came into her heart, and she asked again if his
God were the same the Icelanders worshipped. He shook his head, and she
eagerly questioned farther, but grew so voluble that he could not follow
her, and the conversation ceased. Then the stranger rose and went out
to the little corpse, which he addressed in impassioned terms in his
own language, making over it the same sign that had drawn the maiden’s
attention before. He then described to her--mostly in pantomime, and with
a few Norse words to help him on, and a few slowly-pronounced questions
on her part--how the boy and he had been in a boat that was wrecked many
days’ journey from their own country, and how he had carried him and fed
him for three or four days, and then seen him die in his arms. The boy
was the only son of a great chief, and he was taking him to his uncle in
the North of Scotland. His own country was south of Scotland, a large
island like Iceland, but green and beautiful, and there was no ice there.
“The girl made him understand that she was alone for a day or two, but
when her father came back he would help him. He evidently understood her
better than she did him.
“The next morning, when she again set food before him, she imitated his
sign of the cross, and said she wished to believe in the true God; and
if his God were the true one, she would believe in him. She looked so
earnest and anxious that he again began to try to explain; but the few
words he could command, though they sufficed to hint at his worldly
adventures, and made clear to her that he had been wrecked, were scarcely
adequate to tell her of the new religion she longed to understand.
“But at noon that day another guest and traveller passed by the scald’s
dwelling. He was hurrying to the same castle where the girl’s father had
gone in his capacity of minstrel, but a violent snow-storm had come on
that morning, and he had lost his way. He stopped a moment to refresh
himself, and noticed the stranger. He was himself known as a great
traveller, and the figure in the coarse black robe seemed not unfamiliar
to him. He addressed the stranger in the latter’s language, guessing him
at once to be an Irish monk. He said he had seen such men in the Scottish
islands, where he had been storm-driven with his ship two years ago, and
he had picked up a little of their speech. When the maiden discovered
that in this stray guest she had found an interpreter, she pressed him,
implored him, almost commanded him, to stay.
“‘I must ask him the questions my father could not solve yesterday,’ she
said; ‘and my father’s friend will not refuse to speak in my name, for I
believe that the unknown God has answered my prayer in sending this holy
man over the sea to my very feet.’ And she told him how the stranger had
come to her, out of the darkness, in the shape of a cross--the same sign
he made to propitiate his God.
“‘Ask him to tell us what he believes,’ she said impetuously; and the
interpreter, compelled by some instinct that he could not resist, began
his office willingly.
“‘Tell him,’ she said, ‘that yesterday, before he came, I was all day
thinking that the high, true, unknown God had a message for me, and a
truer faith to teach me, because he had put into my heart a longing for
something higher than what our books and songs have taught us. And tell
him that I believe God sent him in answer to my doubts and prayers.’
“‘The traveller faithfully translated all this. The monk’s face glowed
as he replied, in his own language, which he used with the grace and
skill of a poet:
“‘Tell the maiden that she is right; the true God _did_ send me, and now
I know why such things happened to me; why I was wrecked with my lord’s
only son, a precious freight, a sacred deposit, which the Lord of lords
has now taken upon himself to account for to the earthly father, bereaved
of his one hope. But God sent me here because to this pure-hearted virgin
I was to explain the faith he had already put into her heart. It is not
I who bring her the true faith, but God himself who has spoken to her
and inclined her to believe; me he has sent to put this message into
practical form. Tell her that this is the birthday of the Lord, and that
a thousand years ago, almost at the same hour when I set my dead burden
at her feet, a living Child, God’s own Child, lay at the feet of a pure
Virgin in a little village far away in the land of the rising sun. And as
this maiden’s torch which I saw over the wild, frozen sea, and followed,
was an emblem of the faith that dwelt already in her heart, so, too, a
marvellous star led three wise men, the scalds of the East, to where this
Child lay, and the star was the emblem of their firm faith, which led
them to cross rivers and deserts to reach the Child. And tell her that
the way in which this wonderful birth was celebrated was by a song which
held all the essence of truth in it: “Glory to God on high, and on earth
peace to men of good-will.”’
“All this the interpreter told the maiden, and both marvelled at it. The
stranger told them more and more of that wonderful tale, so familiar
to us, but which once sounded to our warlike forefathers like the
foolishness of babes and sucklings, or at most like some Eastern myth
good enough for philosophers to wrangle over, but unfit for sturdy men
of the forest. To the Icelandic maiden it seemed but the fulfilment of
her own dreams; and as she listened to the story of the Child, grown to
be a wise but obedient Boy, and then a wandering, suffering Man, her
soul seemed to drink in the hidden grandeur of the relation, to pierce
beyond the human stumbling-blocks which confronted the wise and learned
of other lands, and go at once to the heart of the great mystery of love,
personified in the Man-God. All the rest seemed to her to be the fitting
garment of the central mystery, the crown of leaves growing from the
fruitful trunk of this one doctrine. All day long the three sat together,
the two Icelanders hanging on the words of the stranger; and so the
scald found them on his return. He, too, wanted to know the news which
the monk had brought; for he said he had always believed that behind
their national songs and hymns lay something greater, but perhaps not
expedient for Norsemen to know. He shook his head sadly when he learned
the monk’s precepts of love, peace, mercy, and forgiveness, and said he
feared his countrymen would not understand that, but for his part it was
not uncongenial to him. As the weather was such that no vessel could put
to sea before the ice broke up, he constrained the monk to stay the rest
of the winter with him, and in the spring promised to go over with him to
the nearest Scottish coast, and carry the body of his little charge to
the uncle to whom he had been on his way when he was wrecked.
“Before the New Year began, the monk baptized the first Icelandic
convert, the daughter of the scald, and gave her the name of the Mother
of the Babe of Bethlehem, Mary. Many others heard of the new religion
before he left, but that does not belong to my story. The new convert
and her father accompanied him to Scotland, and were present at the
burial of the Irish chieftain’s son at the castle of his Scottish
uncle. The latter’s son married the Norse maiden, but she never ceased
to lament that it had not been given to her to convert many of her own
countrymen, or at least shed her blood for her new faith. All her life
long she helped to send missionaries to Iceland; and when her son grew
up to manhood, the palm she coveted was awarded to him, for he went to
his mother’s native country, founded a monastery there, labored among
the people, converted many, and taught reading and the arts of peace as
well as the faith to his pupils; became abbot of the monastery, and was
finally martyred on the steps of the altar by a horde of savage heathen
Norsemen.
“This is the best Christmas story I know, children,” concluded the Herr
Pfarrer; “and you, Rika, I can wish you no better model than the fair
maiden of Iceland.”
It was nearly midnight when the old priest finished his tale, and Frau
Köhler, rising, and thanking him cordially for this unwonted addition to
ordinary Christmas stories, led him to a door which had been locked till
now. It opened into a room decked as a chapel, with an altar at the end,
which was now decorated with evergreens. A few chairs and benches were
ranged before it, and on a table at the side was everything in readiness
for saying Mass.
“It is long since I have heard a midnight Mass,” said the good hostess,
growing suddenly grave and reverential in her manner, “and my Rika never
has; and you know, Herr Pfarrer, I told you I had a greater surprise in
store for you yet, after all the local customs in which you were so much
interested.”
So the beautiful Midnight Mass was said in the Mecklenburg inspector’s
farm-house, and a more impressive one Frau Köhler had never heard in any
southern cathedral; for though there was no music and no pomp, there
brooded over the little congregation a spirit of reverence and peace,
which comes in full perfection only through a deep silence. The hostess
and her daughter received Communion together, and the attentive household
could not help thinking of the beautiful Icelandic convert when she came
back from the altar, her hands folded over her breast, and her long, fair
hair plaited in two plain, thick tresses.
Herr Heldmann had stayed too, and from that day he never ceased his
study of theological problems and his correspondence with the Herr
Pfarrer, till he became a Catholic, and was married to Rika in this same
little chapel-room a year later by the same kind old priest. One of
the young apprentices of Emanuel Köhler had been his secret rival; but
notwithstanding that Heldmann was ungainly, shy, and twice her age, Rika
decidedly thought that she had the best of the bargain.
And it was true; he had a heart of gold, and she made him a model wife.
CHRISTMAS CHIMES.
The clear starlight, of a southern night,
Shone in Judæa’s sky,
The angels sang, and their harp-strings rang
With “Glory to God on high.”
Through the pearl gates streamed, ere the morning beamed,
The radiance of Heaven’s day;
And the shepherds led to the lonely bed
Where the holy Child-God lay.
The Yule-log’s light gleams warm to-night
In many an English home,
And no spirits dare--so the wise declare--
In the light of its beams to come;
The weird mistletoe and the holly glow
On castle and cottage wall;
While the jest and song ring all night long,
Through the merry banquet-hall.
And in other climes at the ringing chimes
There are scenes of joy and mirth:
E’en round the dead is its beauty shed
Who at Christmas pass from earth.
On this holy day, so the old tomes say,
Heaven’s portals open wide,
And the soul glides in, freed from all its sin
By the birth of the Crucified.
In our own fair land there is many a band
Whose home is filled with glee,
Whose hearts beat high, as the fleet hours fly,
With thoughts of the Christmas-tree.
May the Christ-Child weave, on this Christmas eve,
New hopes as the years go by,
And around His throne may at last each one
Sing “Glory to God on high.”
ANGLICANS, OLD CATHOLICS, AND THE CONFERENCE AT BONN.
Under the title of _Anglicanism, Old Catholicism, and the Union of the
Christian Episcopal Churches_, an essay has recently been published by
the Rev. Father Tondini,[178] Barnabite, whose intimate acquaintance with
the respective languages of England, Germany, and Russia, as well as the
religious history and literature of those countries, peculiarly qualifies
him for dealing with the questions just now exciting so much attention in
Western Europe. We shall, therefore, not only make his treatise, which
merits more than ordinary notice, the basis of the present article, but
shall reproduce such portions of it as are particularly suggestive at the
present time, and conclude with some account of the Conference at Bonn
and the considerations it suggests.
In the Introduction to his treatise the reverend author gives the reasons
which called it forth, the last being the promise made on the tomb of a
friend[179] to leave nothing untried which might promote the return of
the Greco-Russian Church to Catholic unity; an unexpected opportunity
being given for fulfilling this promise by the reference made more than
once by Mr. Gladstone, in his recent publications, to the organization
of the Eastern as contrasted with that of the Catholic Church. Moreover,
the sympathy displayed by Mr. Gladstone for the Old Catholics and their
Conference at Bonn serves to complete the argument.
There are two passages in Mr. Gladstone’s _Vaticanism_ with which Father
Tondini has more especially dealt. One is the following:
“Of these early provisions for a balance of church power, and for
securing the laity against sacerdotal domination, the rigid conservatism
of the Eastern Church presents us, even down to the present day, with an
authentic and living record.”[180]
These valuable “provisions” are set forth at length in the second edition
of a former work by Father Tondini, _The Pope of Rome and the Popes of
the Oriental Church_.[181] In a special preface he there says: “There is
much to be learned from them, especially if we take into consideration
their recent date, and the ecclesiastical canons of which the Eastern
Church has not been indeed a rigid conservator.”
In the quotations there given at length from the original documents, we
find abundant evidence of the manner in which the ancient canons have
been set aside, wherever convenient to the czar, for his own regulations.
The second passage requiring comment is the following:
“The ancient principles of popular election and control, for which room
was found in the Apostolic Church under its inspired teachers, and which
still subsist in the Christian East.”[182]
This, as we shall see, is disposed of in the third chapter of the present
essay, into which has been collected trustworthy information as to the
non-popular mode of election of bishops resorted to in the Oriental
Orthodox Church.[183]
Towards the close of the Introduction the writer remarks that if the
statements made by Mr. Gladstone respecting the Catholic Church were
true, she could not be the true church of our Lord, and, if not, he
asks, where then is the true church to be found? The Oriental Church
could not solve the question, because she is in contradiction to the
doctrine contained in her own liturgy,[184] and also for other reasons,
to which for some years past he has been directing public attention.[185]
There remain to be considered the Anglican Establishment--this being the
church to which belongs the writer who accuses the Catholic Church of
having changed in faith, and deprived her children of their moral and
mental freedom--and the newest sect of all, namely, the so-called Old
Catholics, owing to the same writer’s admiration of those who figure in
its ranks.
Reason, so loudly appealed to by Mr. Gladstone, has been strictly adhered
to by Father Tondini in his careful examination of the credentials of
the two latter bodies, and we will give, in as concise a form as may
be consistent with clearness, the result of his inquiry. He especially
addresses those who admit the existence of a visible Church of Christ,
and still more particularly those who, rather than reconcile themselves
to the Catholic Church, say that neither the Roman Catholic Church,
nor the Anglican Establishment, nor the Old-Catholic Society, but the
Oriental Orthodox Church, is the true visible church of Christ.
I.
The claims of the Anglican Church are first examined, her vitality being
an argument that we are in presence of an institution adhered to, at
least by a large portion of her members, with conviction and devotedness,
as a valuable medium between unbelief and superstition, worldliness and
sanctity; and of a state church as solidly framed as human genius could
devise.
“Bodies,” says Mr. Gladstone, “are usually held to be bound by the
evidence of their own selected and typical witnesses.”[186] Now,
the selected and typical witnesses of the Church of England are the
sovereign, who is “Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the
Church in her Dominions,” and the episcopate. If the whole clergy is
consulted, the evidence becomes as undeniable as it can possibly be.
This perfect evidence is found in the Thirty-nine Articles, which are
thus headed: “Articles agreed upon by the archbishops and bishops of
both provinces, and the whole clergy, assembled in convocation holden at
London in the year 1562, for the avoiding of diversities of opinions,”
etc., etc.
The Ratification is to the same effect, with the addition of the assent
and consent of the queen (Elizabeth), after their final rehearsal in the
General Convocation of bishops and clergy in 1571. They are, moreover,
reprinted in the _Book of Common Prayer_, with the Declaration of King
James I. affixed, and which runs as follows:
“Being by God’s ordinance, according to our just title, Defender of
the Faith and supreme governor of the church in these our dominions,
… we will that all curious search be laid aside, and these disputes
shut up in God’s promises as they be generally set forth in the Holy
Scriptures, and the general meaning of the Articles of the Church of
England according to them; and that no man hereafter shall either print
or preach to draw the article aside any way, but shall submit to it in
the plain and full meaning thereof, and … shall take it in the literal
and grammatical sense.”
“Following this last admonition, and bearing in mind that the Church
of England considers herself to be a branch of the universal church of
Christ, we open the _Book of Common Prayer_, and turn to those among
the Articles which treat of the universal church, that we may see how,
without renouncing our Italian nationality--which to us is very dear--we
could belong to the universal church of Christ. We see an article headed
‘Of the Authority of General Councils,’ and, on reading it, find to our
astonishment the definition, not indeed of the infallibility of the Pope,
but of the fallibility, without any exception, of the universal church of
Christ! It is: Article XXI.--‘General Councils may not be called together
without the commandment and will of princes. And when they be gathered
together (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not
governed with the spirit and word of God), they may err, and sometimes
have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained
by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority,
unless it may be declared that they be taken out of Holy Scripture.’”
“Thus” (we give Father Tondini’s words) “the Church of England has
defined, in two plenary national councils, that the universal church of
Christ, even when assembled in a general council, may err, and ordain, as
necessary to salvation, things which have neither strength nor authority;
and a king, ‘Defender of the Faith,’ has declared that this is the true
doctrine of the Church of England, agreeable to God’s word, and required
all his loving subjects to submit to this article ‘in the plain and full
meaning thereof,’ and to take it ‘in the literal and grammatical sense’!
“We can hardly trust our own eyes. Again: What does the word ‘declare’
mean in the concluding words of the article? This word may convey two
senses--that of proving and of making a declaration.
“In the first case, _who_ is to offer the proofs that ‘the thing ordained
as necessary to salvation’ is taken out of Holy Scripture? This the
Church of England has forgotten to tell us!… Moreover, an authority
whose decrees, in order to have a binding power, must be proved to be
taken out of Holy Scripture, is by that very fact subordinate to those
who are called to examine the proofs.[187] The chief authorities of the
church assembled in a general council are thus rendered as inferior to
the faithful as the claimant is inferior to the judge who is about to
pronounce sentence upon his claims. The teaching and governing body
of the church is consequently no more than an assembly commissioned
to frame, ‘as necessary to salvation,’ laws to be submitted to the
approbation of the faithful!
“Is this serious? Is it even respectful to human intelligence?”
Again, if the word “declare” must be taken in the sense of a declaration,
Father Tondini asks: “But by whom is such a declaration to be made?
Assuredly not by the council itself--‘judice in causâ propriâ.’ An
authority liable to err, ‘even in things pertaining unto God,’ and to
ordain ‘as necessary to salvation’ things which have ‘neither strength
nor authority,’ is liable also to mistake the sense of Holy Scripture.
To seek such a declaration from this fallible authority would be like
begging the question.
“The declaration must, then, be made by some authority external to the
general council. But the ‘archbishops, bishops, and the whole clergy of
England’ have omitted to inform the faithful _where_ such an authority is
to be found. Moreover, since a general council--that is, the ‘selected
and typical witnesses’ of the whole Church of Christ--may err (according
to Article XXI.), it necessarily follows that portions of the whole
church of Christ may err also. In fact, this natural consequence is
explicitly stated in Article XIX. The zeal displayed by the Church of
England in asserting the fallibility, both of the whole church of Christ
and of portions of that church, may be said to rival that of the most
fervent advocates of the infallibility of the Pope.”
This XIXth Article modestly asserts that, “as the Churches of Jerusalem,
Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath
erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in
matters of faith.”
Whereupon “a legitimate doubt arises whether the Church of England, too,
might not have erred in issuing the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion.
This doubt is very material. These Articles ordain several things as
‘necessary to salvation.’ Are they, or are they not, ‘taken out of Holy
Scripture’? Have they, or have they not, ‘strength and authority’?”
Shortly after their promulgation, we have it upon the authority of
King James I. himself that this doubt gave rise to “disputations,
altercations, and questions such as may nourish faction both in the
church and commonwealth,” and his majesty adds that “therefore, upon
mature deliberation,” etc., he “thought fit” to make the declaration
following:
“That the Articles of the Church of England … do contain the true
doctrine of the Church of England, agreeable to God’s Word, which WE do
therefore ratify and confirm.”
“May we” (with Father Tondini) “be allowed respectfully to ask whether
King James I. was infallible?”
And if so, why should Catholics be charged with having forfeited
their mental and moral freedom, etc., etc., because they admit the
infallibility of the Pope, which results, by the law of development, from
several passages of Holy Scripture; whereas, on the contrary, no “brain
power” will ever be able to discover a single word in Holy Scripture
which can, by the most vigorous process of development, bud forth into
the infallibility of a King of England?
On the other hand, if King James were _not_ infallible, by what right
could he then prohibit and _will_ in matters of faith for his subjects?
His only right was this: that the Church of England had been made a
powerful _instrumentum regni_ in the hands of her sovereigns,[188] just
as the Church of Russia is in the hands of her czars.
After this, observes the writer, no inconsistency ought to astonish us.
In Article XVIII. it is declared that “the body of Christ is given,
taken, and eaten in the [Lord’s] Supper _only after an heavenly
and spiritual manner_”; and again, at the end of the “Order of the
Ministration of the Holy Communion,” that “the natural body and blood
of our Saviour Christ are in heaven, _and not here_.” How can these
declarations be made to agree with the following, which is taught in the
Little Catechism?--“The body and blood of Christ are _verily and indeed
taken_ and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper.”
Again, in Article XI. we find: “That we are justified by faith _only_
is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort”; whereas in the
order for the visitation of the sick we read as follows:
“Here shall the sick person be moved to make _a special confession of his
sins_, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After
which confession the priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and heartily
desire it) after this sort,” etc., etc.
“But,” asks Father Tondini, “by what strange metamorphosis can the
above-quoted doctrine of justification _by faith only_, declared to be
‘most wholesome and very full of comfort’ while we are in good health,
cease to possess the power of comforting the conscience of a sick
person? And how can confession, which through life is to be considered
by Anglicans as ‘_grown of the corrupt following of the apostles_’ (see
Article XXV.), become suddenly so transfigured by the approach of death
as to obtain the power of relieving a conscience ‘troubled with any
weighty matter’?”
Although it may not be matter of much surprise that a church which has
so carefully defined her own fallibility should have one doctrine for
her children in their days of health and vigor, and another for the
time of their sickness and death, still it does surprise us that a man
of education like Mr. Gladstone should be so unconscious of his own
extraordinary inconsistency in appealing--as he does throughout his
attacks against Catholics and the Catholic Church--to “mental and moral
freedom,” “logic,” “consistency of mind,” “manliness of thought,” etc.,
etc.
Already arise from all sides echoes of the question singularly enough
asked by Mr. Gladstone himself: “Is the Church of England worth
preserving?”[189]
“The Church of England,” said Laud, “is Protestant.” And Mr. Gladstone,
true to “the church of his birth and his country,” protests, like her,
against the church which made his country a Christian nation. The
Ritualists, the latest sect within her, still boast that they “help
to keep people from the Church of Rome,” and reject the imputation of
sympathy with her as an insupportable calumny.[190] “They will give
communion in Westminster Abbey to an Unitarian, flatter Jansenists and
Monophysites, remain in communion with bishops whom they themselves
proclaim to be heretics; but one thing they will not do--tolerate the
creed of the church to which they owe every fragment and crumb of
truth that remains to them.” “Take the great Anglian divines,” writes
Mr. Marshall: “Bull scorned and preached against the Catholic Church;
Barrow wrote a book against it; Sandys called the Vicar of Christ ‘that
triple-crowned thief and murderer’; Hooker sent for a dissenter on his
death-bed; Morton, Bramhall, Andrews, and the rest avowed the opinion
that the Protestant sects of the Continent were as true churches as their
own. Episcopal ordination, as the late Mr. J. Keble confessed, was not
made a condition for holding Anglican preferment until the latter half
of the XVIIth century; and it was _then_ adopted as a weapon against the
growing power of the dissenters. _Then_ Anglicans who had always argued
as Protestants against the church began to argue as Catholics against
dissent.”
At the present time, however, the English episcopate seems veering round
again to the Protestant quarter, against the pseudo-Catholic innovations
of a portion of the clergy. The _Church Herald_, which, up to the time
when it ceased to exist, a few weeks ago, had been protesting for many
months previously, with good reason, against the implacable opposition
offered by the Anglican bishops to the so-called “Catholic revival,”
gravely told its readers, while asserting once more that “no one trusts
the bishops,” and that “of influence they have and can have next to
none,” nevertheless that “their claims as Catholic bishops were never
so firmly established.” (!) Certainly Anglican logic is peculiar. Their
bishops were never more vehemently opposed to the Catholic faith; but no
matter, “never were they more truly Catholic.” (!)
“I have very reluctantly,” says Dr. Lee (as reported in the _John Bull_),
“come to a conclusion which makes me melancholy--that the passing of
the Public Worship Bill has to all intents and purposes sealed the fate
of the Church of England.” Its end, he thinks, is very near, because
no church can last unless it be a true portion of the one family of
God--not a mere human sect, taking its variable opinion from the civil
government, and its practice from a parliamentary officer without the
faintest shadow of spiritual authority. “The point that gravely perplexes
me,” he writes, “with regard to the new law, is that our bishops, one
and all, have, with their eyes open and deliberately, renounced their
spiritual jurisdiction, which, for both provinces and every diocese, is
placed in the hands of Lord Penzance, ex-judge of the Divorce Court.” For
which reason certain Ritualist papers lament it as “strange and sad” that
Dr. Lee should say of the bishops and their bill exactly the same _after_
their victory as they themselves had said _before_ it. These papers,
after the example of some learned Anglican professors, etc., are ready
enough beforehand to threaten, in the event of such and such a decision,
to “reconsider their position.” The decision is made; they then discover
that, after all, it is not so very serious, and compose themselves, for
the third, or fourth, or fifth time, just where they were before.
It is stated that the first case under the Public Worship Regulations
Act is now being brought before Lord Penzance. It is a suit against the
Rev. J. C. Ridsdale, incumbent of S. Peter’s, Folkestone. According to
the new law, three inhabitants made a representation to the Archbishop
of Canterbury as to the manner in which the services were conducted at
S. Peter’s. A copy of the representation was forwarded to Mr. Ridsdale,
and, no agreement to abide by the decision of the archbishop having been
made, the proceedings will be determined by the judge, from whom there
is an ultimate appeal to her Majesty in council. There are, it is said,
three cases pending under the new law; and fresh proceedings are about
to be commenced against the clergy of S. Alban’s, Holborn. The bill bids
fair to be as one-sided in its application as it avowedly was in its
intention. “The Puritan triumph in the XVIIth century,” said the Bishop
of London, “would not be more disastrous than a pseudo-Catholic triumph
now,” and the rest of the episcopal bench are evidently of the same mind.
Nor can it be matter of much surprise that such repression should be
exercised against men, many of them truly earnest and self-denying, who
are the means of reviving a certain amount of Catholic doctrine as well
as practice (however illegal) in their communion, when Dr. Lee is able
to write as follows to an episcopal correspondent: “The Catholic faith,
Archbishop Tait, in the presence of his suffragans, frankly declared
that _neither he nor they believed_, and his grace--to give him all
credit--has done his worst to get rid of it.”
Here again can we wonder at the result, even to her highest dignitaries,
of the uncertain teaching of a church which, from its very beginning, was
intended to be a compromise?
And, again, how can a church which is essentially a compromise be
expected to sympathize with that unchanging church which is “the pillar
and ground of the truth”?
II.
To return to Father Tondini’s essay. We come now to consider the newest
among the sects, the so-called Old Catholics, who, after the manner of
many other schismatics, appropriate the name of “Catholic” with an affix
of their own, which is a proof that theirs is a base metal, unworthy of
the “image and superscription of the King” or his appointed vicegerent.
Mr. Gladstone’s judgment of these people is thus expressed: “When the
cup of endurance,” he says, “which had so long been filling, began, with
the Council of the Vatican in 1870, to overflow, the most famous and
learned living theologian of the Roman communion, Dr. von Döllinger, long
the foremost champion of his church, refused compliance, and submitted,
with his temper undisturbed and his freedom unimpaired, to the extreme
and most painful penalty of excommunication. With him many of the most
learned and respected theologians of the Roman communion in Germany
underwent the same sentence. The very few who elsewhere (I do not speak
of Switzerland) suffered in like manner deserve an admiration rising in
proportion to their fewness.
“It seems as though Germany, from which Luther blew the mighty trumpet
that even now echoes through the land, still retained her primacy in the
domain of conscience, still supplied the _centuria prærogativa_ of the
great _comitia_ of the world.”[191]
After giving this quotation, Father Tondini, in the exercise of his
“mental freedom,” proceeds to examine whether Old Catholics really
deserve this highly laudatory and enthusiastic passage, and in what their
merit consists.
Their merit consists “in having rebelled against the church to which they
previously belonged, on the ground that, in their conviction, she had
changed her faith.
“Not one single bishop, not one out of the teaching body of the
church, has expressed the same conviction. Old Catholics are, then, a
mere handful … protesting against the Pope and the whole episcopate,
preferring their own private judgment to that of the whole teaching body
of the Catholic Church, and fully decided to do everything in their
power to bring about the triumph of their private personal judgment.
Their first act was to raise a schism in the church. They had openly
and freely separated themselves from her long before the sentence of
excommunication was notified to them. They then became the occasion of a
severe persecution against their former fellow-Catholics; and now, whilst
the persecution is raging, and Old Catholics, supported by governments
and the press, have suffered neither in person nor property, nor in
their individual liberty, we are called upon to bestow upon those who
suffered ‘in like manner’ an admiration rising in proportion to their
fewness!”[192]
But why is this? and what is the _Expostulation_ itself but a cry of
alarm to prevent British Catholics from rebelling against the queen?
Why, then, is the rebellion of some private individuals to be extolled
in terms like these? Or if, indeed, strong private religious convictions
(taking it for granted that the Old Catholics have such) make it
praiseworthy to rebel against the church, why should not strong private
political convictions make it equally praiseworthy to rebel against the
state? The field of similar applications is fearfully wide, and many a
parental admonition to an indolent or disobedient child might be met by
the young rebel in Mr. Gladstone’s words, that “with temper undisturbed,
with freedom unimpaired,” he had no intention to do as he was bid.
The first official document of the Old Catholics is the “Declaration” of
Dr. von Döllinger and his adherents, dated Munich, June, 1871,[193] and
which bears the signatures of Dr. von Döllinger, sixteen professors or
doctors, seven magistrates, three private gentlemen, two manufacturers,
one “Maître royal des cérémonies,” and one “Intendant royal de musique au
théâtre de cour”--thirty-one signatures in all, to which was added later
that of the unhappy Loyson.
The second document is a French manifesto or appeal, “Aux fidèles de
l’Ancienne Eglise Catholique,” signed “E. Michaud, Docteur en Théologie,”
dated 1872, and widely circulated in France, with a request that every
reader will help to make it known and gain as many additional adherents
as possible.
The style of both documents is peculiar. They alike belong to those
literary productions which betray an almost feverish excitement of mind.
A small number of persons, till lately belonging to the Catholic Church,
declare themselves “determined” to do their utmost towards bringing about
“the reform of ecclesiastical affairs, so long desired and henceforth so
inevitable, in the organization as well as in the life of the church.”
In fact, the authors of both these documents show a faith in their
own infallibility, both doctrinal and practical, at least as strong as
their conviction of the fallibility of the Pope. They are peculiarly
unfortunate in their choice of the fathers they quote, as well as in
their appeal to the authority of S. Paul. Their style is certainly
wholly unlike that of this great apostle, who, with so much earnestness
and humility, begs the prayers of the faithful, while the necessity of
prayer for such an undertaking as that which the Old Catholics call
the “regeneration of the church” is not even once alluded to in their
manifestoes.
There is another consideration which presents itself. Every practical
man is careful to ascertain the competency, in any particular subject,
of those who give him their advice upon it. A sick man would not consult
a lawyer for his cure, nor an aggrieved man seek legal advice of his
baker or shoemaker. The distinguished magistrates who signed the German
Declaration must be supposed to have done so, not in consequence of
a clear and detailed knowledge of the grounds of the assertions it
contained, but in consequence of their confidence in Dr. von Döllinger,
which led them to adopt his views. In the same way must be explained
the adhesions given by the respectable manufacturers, “Maître royal
des cérémonies,” and “Intendant royal de musique au théâtre de cour”;
for though these pursuits need not be in themselves an obstacle to a
man being well acquainted with religious matters, still they are an
undeniable argument against his having made it the chief object of his
studies.
“Now,” continues Father Tondini, “the charges brought in the present
case against the Catholic Church are so heavy, and the mere probability
of their being founded on truth of such vital importance to the whole
Christian world, … that to require something more than the ordinary
amount of theological science which is in general to be found in men
involved in worldly affairs of the most distracting kind, is only acting
in accordance with the most ordinary laws of prudence. All this will
become evident if we only suppose that the ‘Declaration’ had appeared
without the signatures of Dr. von Döllinger and the above-mentioned
professors.” In looking over the latter we find that none of them can lay
any claim to the same scientific authority and repute as that which he
enjoys; and the same remark applies to all who have subsequently joined
the Old Catholics.
With regard to Dr. von Döllinger himself, he has till now, if we
are rightly informed, abstained from joining his fellow-subscribers
to the German “Declaration” in their submission to Mgr. Reinkens,
the Old-Catholic Bishop of Germany. “Thus the chief promoter of the
opposition to the Vatican Council stands apart, and we should be grateful
to any one who might tell us to what church he belongs and whom he
recognizes as his legitimate bishop. We cannot suppose that he whom Mr.
Gladstone calls ‘the most famous and learned theologian of the Roman
communion’ has the pretension of forming a church in his own person.”
Father Tondini next notices the remarkable phenomenon presented by Old
Catholicism during the first three years of its existence as body without
a head, and calls the reader’s attention to the following passage in the
French manifesto:
“If it be the will of God,” thus it runs, “that some Roman bishops have
the courage to return publicly to the profession of the ancient faith,
we will place them with joy at our head. And if none break publicly
with heresy, our church, though essentially episcopal, will not for
that reason be condemned to die; for as soon as it shall be possible to
regularize its situation in this respect, we shall choose priests who
will receive either in the West or in the East an episcopal consecration
of unquestionable validity.”
“These,” he remarks, “are plain words. It evidently results from
them that there was a time when the church, ‘unstained by any Roman
innovation,’ was still looking for a bishop--in other words, for a head,
which she did not possess as yet. How, in spite of this deficiency,
the Old-Catholic Church could be termed essentially episcopal we are
at a loss to understand. That which is essential to a thing is that
without which it cannot possibly exist for a single moment; but here
we are asked to believe in a miracle which at once destroys all our
physical and metaphysical notions of things. A new-born warrior fighting
without a head, and a being existing without one of its essential
constituents--such are the wonders which accompanied the genesis of the
so-called regenerated church of the Old Catholics.”
The German Declaration in like manner states the then headless condition
of the Old-Catholic body. Its subscribers, and among them Prof. Reinkens,
say they look forward to a time when “all Catholicity shall be placed
under the direction of a primate and an episcopacy, which by means of
science,” etc., etc., “and not by the decrees of the Vatican, … shall
approach the crowning object assigned to Christian development--we mean
that of the union of the other Christian confessions now separated from
us,” etc.
Such was their language in June, 1871, when they were already nearly a
year old. Their first bishop, Joseph Hubert Reinkens, was consecrated
in August, 1873. These dates are very important. No power on earth will
ever be able to annul them as historical facts, which prove that a body
calling itself the true church of Christ has existed some time without a
single bishop, although bishops are essential to the church of Christ, as
Scripture, tradition, history, all antiquity agree. S. Cyprian says:
“The church is the people in union with the bishop--a flock adhering to
its shepherd. The bishop is in the church and the church in the bishop.
He who is not with the bishop is not in the church.”[194] And again:
“He cannot be accounted a bishop who, in despite of the evangelic and
apostolic tradition, has, of himself, become one (_a se ipso ortus est,
nemini succedens_), and succeeds to none.”
Now, “to what bishop” (asks Father Tondini) “did Dr. Reinkens succeed?
His first pastoral letter, dated August 11, 1873, is addressed ‘to the
priests and faithful of Germany who persevere in the ancient Catholic
faith.’ Who ever heard of the bishop and diocese of Germany before
this letter?” Again: “That same Dr. Reinkens who in June, 1871, signed
the ‘Declaration’ in which the Christian confessions outside the Roman
Church were called ‘Christian confessions now separated from us,’ in
August, 1873, saluted with the title of ‘Old Catholics,’ the Jansenists
of Holland, and Mgr. Heykamp, the bishop by whom he was consecrated, with
that of ‘bishop of the Old Catholics’!”[195]
III.
We now come to the consideration of Old Catholicism as an instrument of
union between the Christian Episcopal churches. In accordance with their
“Declaration,” the Old Catholics insist upon its being one of their main
objects to reunite the Christian churches separated from Rome during
the VIIIth and IXth centuries, and complacently boast of the marks of
sympathy bestowed upon them by these churches.
From one of their manifestoes Father Tondini quotes the following
important statements:
“The bishops of the Oriental Orthodox Church”--thus runs the
manifesto--“and those of the Episcopal Church of England and the United
States of America (!) encourage Old Catholicism with their most profound
sympathy. Representatives of the Orthodox Church of Russia assist every
year at its congress.… The interest displayed for it by governments is
not inferior to that of the churches.… The governments of Russia and of
England are disposed to recognize its rights when it shall be opportune
to do so.”[196]
Upon which he points out the exceeding inexpediency, for their own sakes,
of these governments or their bishops having any participation in the
doings of Old Catholics; and this for the following reasons, which are
worthy of careful consideration by the two governments in question, and
which we give in his own words:
“In order, it would seem, to escape the stringent conclusion of S.
Cyprian’s words, ‘He who does not succeed to other bishops, but is
self-originated, cannot be reckoned among bishops,’ Mgr. Reinkens, in his
above-quoted pastoral letter, … authoritatively declared not only that
the ‘apostolic see of Rome was vacant,’ but that not one of the actually
existing Roman Catholic bishops was legitimate.
“In support of this assumption the Old-Catholic bishop invokes some
fathers of the church--not, indeed, what they said or did while living,
but what they would say or do if they were to return to life: ‘If the
great bishops of the ancient church were to return to life in the midst
of us,’ says Mgr. Reinkens, ‘a Cyprian, (!) a Hilary, an Ambrose, … they
would acknowledge none of the existing bishops of the Roman Catholic
Church as validly elected.’[197]
“So much for the fact. As it can only be ascertained when those great
bishops are restored to life, all we can do is to defer this verification
until the great day of judgment.
“Now comes the general principle on which the assumed fact is founded.
Let us listen again to Mgr. Reinkens: ‘They [the resuscitated bishops of
the ancient church] would not acknowledge any of the existing bishops of
the Roman Catholic Church as validly elected, because none of them were
appointed in conformity with the immutable rule of the fathers of the
church. Never! no, never! would they have received into their company,
in the quality of a Catholic bishop, one who had not been chosen by the
people and the clergy. This mode of election was considered by them as of
divine precept, and consequently as immutable.’”
“How many bishops are there in existence at the present day,” asks Father
Tondini, “either in the Anglican Church or in the Christian East, who
have been chosen by the people and the clergy?”
In answer to this question we have, respecting the non-popular mode of
election in the Oriental Orthodox Church, the following trustworthy
information: In the Orthodox Church of the Turkish Empire the election
of a patriarch is made by the members of its synod, which is composed of
metropolitans, of one of their own number, and this election “is then
made known to the people assembled in the atrium of the synodicon, who
give, by acclamation and the cry of ἄξιος (worthy), their assent to the
election.… This, however, is in fact an empty formality; the more so
as the election itself is the result of previous secret understandings
between the more influential members of the synod and the leading men
among the people.”[198]
“The three patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem are elected
by their respective synods, composed of metropolitans.
“The metropolitans and bishops of each patriarchate are elected by the
respective patriarchs, together with their synods.”
Did the Patriarch of Constantinople, in agreeing, on the invitation of
Dr. von Döllinger, to send representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church
to the Old Catholic Church Congress at Bonn, forget that, according to
Mgr. Reinkens, all bishops who have not been elected by the clergy and
the people are illegitimate bishops, that their sees are all vacant, that
this mode of election is of divine precept, and consequently immutable?
“We know not,” says Father Tondini, “which of the two is more to be
wondered at: the boldness of the Old Catholics in inviting the patriarch
to be represented at the congress, or the logical inconsistency of the
patriarch in accepting the invitation.”
Next, with regard to the Orthodox Church of the Russian Empire.
No one who may have read “The Future of the Russian Church,” which
recently appeared in the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD,[199] will need to
be told how little voice either the inferior clergy or people of Russia
have in the election of their bishops. The Most Holy Governing Synod
proposes to his majesty two persons (on an eparchy becoming vacant), and
that one of the two selected by the czar is chosen and consecrated.[200]
(See Consett, _Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great_.)
In the formula of the oath taken by the Russian bishops before being
consecrated, they engage themselves to yield true obedience to the Holy
Synod, “the legitimate authority instituted by the pious Emperor Peter
the Great of immortal memory, and confirmed by command of his (or her)
present imperial majesty,” and to obey all the rules and statutes made by
the authority of the synod agreeably to the will of his (or her) imperial
majesty, adding the following words: “Furthermore, I do testify that I
have not received this province in consideration of gold or silver given
by me, … but I have received it by the free will of our most serene and
most puissant sovereign (by name), and by the _election_ of the Holy
Legislative Synod.[201] Moreover, at the beginning of the ceremony the
bishop-consecrator thus addresses the newly-elected bishop: “Reverend
Father N., the Most Serene and Most Puissant Czar N. N. _hath commanded,
by his own singular and proper edict_, and the Holy Legislative Synod of
all the Russias gives its benediction thereto, that you, holy sir, be
bishop of the city of N.”; to which the future bishop is made to answer:
“Since the Most Serene, etc., Czar has _commanded_, and the … synod … has
judged me worthy to undertake this province, I give thanks therefor, and
do undertake it and in nowise gainsay.”[202]
After similarly disposing (with regard to the remaining Oriental
churches) of Mr. Gladstone’s extraordinary assertion that “the ancient
principles of popular election and control exist in the Christian
East”--an assertion of which also he makes use as a weapon against the
Catholic Church[203]--Father Tondini passes on to the election of bishops
in the Anglican Church. With regard to this, the following abstract from
Stephen is amply sufficient to show how far “the principles of popular
election” prevail in the nomination of the bishops of the Establishment:
“By statute 25 Henry VIII. c. 20 the law was altered and the right of
nomination secured to the crown, it being enacted that, at every future
avoidance of a bishopric, the king may send the dean and chapter his
usual license to proceed to election, or _congé d’elire_, which is always
to be accompanied with a letter missive from the king, containing the
name of the person whom he would have them elect; and if the dean and
chapter delay their election above twelve days, the nomination shall
devolve to the king, who may by letters-patent appoint such person as
he pleases. This election or nomination, if it be of a bishop, must be
signified by the king’s letters-patent to the archbishop of the province;
if it be of an archbishop, to the other archbishop and two bishops, or
to four bishops, requiring them to confirm, invest, and consecrate the
person so elected; which they are bound to perform immediately, without
any application to the See of Rome. After which the bishop-elect shall
sue to the king for his temporalities, shall take oath to the king and to
none other, and shall take restitution of his secular possessions out of
the king’s hand only. And if such dean and chapter do not elect in this
manner by this act appointed, or if such archbishop or bishop do refuse
to confirm, invest, and consecrate such bishop-elect, they shall incur
all the penalties of a præmunire--that is, the loss of all civil rights,
the forfeiture of lands, goods, and chattels, and imprisonment during
the royal pleasure. It is to be observed, however, that the mode here
described of appointing bishops applies only to such sees as are of old
foundation. The five new bishoprics created by Henry VIII. … have always
been donatives, and conferred by letters-patent from the crown; and the
case is the same as to the bishopric of Ripon, now recently created”
(Stephen’s _Commentaries on the Laws of England_, vol. iii. p. 61).
In concluding his essay, Father Tondini repeats Mgr. Reinkens’ words:
“If the great bishops of the ancient church were to return to life in
the midst of us, … never! no, never! would they have received into their
company, in the quality of a Christian bishop, one who had not been
chosen by the people and the clergy; this mode of election was considered
by them as of divine precept, and consequently as immutable”; and then
asks: “How can the support given by the state churches and governments of
England and Russia to Old Catholicism be explained? Is it for the purpose
of declaring that all the episcopal sees, both of England and Russia, are
vacant and awaiting the choice of the people?”
The reader, being now acquainted with much of the contents as well as
with the general tenor of Father Tondini’s essay, may find some interest
(possibly amusement also) in comparing the following remarks of the
London _Tablet_ (Sept. 18) with the confirmation of their accurate
appreciation of the “British Philistine’s” pride in his own obtuseness so
ingenuously furnished (Sept. 25) by a writer in the _Church Review_:
LONDON TABLET.
“We are a little afraid that the Anglican sympathizers with the Old
Catholics will not be sharp enough to understand the keen logic of Father
Tondini’s concise reasoning. The British Philistine rather glories in
being impervious to logic or wit, and chuckles over his own obtuseness
as a proof of the strength of the religion which he patronizes. It is
provoking to a zealous controversialist to have to do battle with such a
heavy antagonist, but we trust the good father will not cease to labor at
the conversion of our illogical but worthy fellow-countrymen. We thank
him for a well-timed and well-written pamphlet.”
(The _Universe_ calls it “another fatal blow for the theology of our
ex-prime minister; closely reasoned and perfectly terrible in its manner
of grasping its luckless opponent.”--_Universe_, September 25, 1875.)
CHURCH REVIEW.
“The Rev. Cæsar Tondini, who is fond of linking Russian Orthodoxy and
Anglican Catholicism in one sweeping condemnation, is by no means one
of the Pope’s greatest controversialists. But this pamphlet is hardly
worthy of even his reputation. Every point in it might be answered by
a _tu quoque_. Fact might be set against fact, defect against defect,
innovation against innovation, inconsistency against inconsistency,
and error against error. But picking holes in our neighbor’s coat will
never mend the rents in our own. So we forbear, content for the present
to congratulate ourselves on the fact that, while Romanists are still
utterly blind to their own nakedness, we have at least plucked a fig-leaf
by the efforts already made to bring about reunion.” [Who could help
thinking, “We would not give a fig for such a leaf as this”?]
IV.
We will conclude the present notice by some account of the recent
Conference at Bonn, in which the Old Catholics have given abundant
proof that they are no freer from variation than are any other of the
Protestant sects.
Desirous of strengthening their position by alliance with other forms
of schism, Dr. von Döllinger invited to a congress representatives
of the schismatic Greek and Russian Church, the English and American
Episcopalians, and the Old Catholics. The assembly was called the
“International Conference of the Union of the Christian Churches,” and
proposed as its object an agreement on the fundamental points of doctrine
professed by Christendom before its divisions, with a view “to restore
by a reform as broad as possible the ancient Catholic Church of the
West.”[204]
In this International Conference, which began on the 12th of August and
ended on the 16th, the principal Orientals, who numbered about twenty
in all, were two bishops from Roumania; an archimandrite from Belgrade;
two archimandrites, Anastasiades and Bryennios, from Constantinople,
sent by the patriarch as being well versed in all the questions which
have divided and which still divide the Greek and Latin Churches; there
were also present the Archbishop of Syra and Tino, Mgr. Licourgos, well
known in England, and six professors, among whom were Profs. Osinnin and
Janischef, the latter being the gentleman who at the last Conference
was so severe on Anglican orders. The Protestant Episcopalians were the
most numerous, being about a hundred in number; but they had only one
bishop among them--namely, the Bishop of Gibraltar. Those of Winchester
and Lincoln, who had also given their adherence to the movement, found
themselves at the last moment unable to attend. The most notable person
in the Anglican group was Dr. Liddon, Canon of S. Paul’s. Dean Howson, of
Chester, was also one of its members; his “views” on nearly every point
of church teaching being diametrically opposed to those of Canon Liddon.
The same group contained an Unitarian minister from Chesterfield (Mr.
Smith), and a “Primitive Methodist” (Mr. Booth, a chemist and druggist
of the same town), who on a late occasion was voted for and returned at
the head of the poll as an advocate of secular education. The Americans
sent only three delegates, and the “Reformed Church” one--the Rev.
Th. de Félice. The Old Catholics, all of whom were Germans, numbered
eighteen or twenty, with Dr. von Döllinger and Bishop Reinkens at their
head, supported by Herr Langen, “Altkatholik”; Herr Lange, Protestant,
and Herr Lang, the least orthodox of all. Close to this little group
figured seven or eight more German Protestants. In all, the Conference
was composed of about one hundred and fifty persons, of whom the _Times_
observes that, “slender as the gathering was, it was forced to display an
almost ludicrous caution in drawing up such articles of faith as would
command the assent of the whole assembly”--articles “so vague that they
might be made to mean anything or nothing”; and, further, that the few
English divines who went to Bonn to play at a council no more represent
the Church of England than Dr. von Döllinger represents the Church of
Rome, but spoke in the name of nothing but themselves. It suggests to
them, with scornful irony, that “charity begins at home,” and that in the
present distracted state of the Church of England, “when nothing keeps
the various and conflicting ‘schools’ of clergy in the same communion
but the secular forces of the Establishment, there is surely there a
magnificent field for the exercise of even a genius of conciliation.”
A Bavarian Protestant clergyman informed the assembly that, as there
was no chance of their coming to an agreement by means of discussion
about dogma, they had far better throw over dogma altogether, and trust
to brotherly love to bring about union. Dr. von Döllinger, however,
said that if they all shared this opinion, they had better have stayed
at home. One reverend gentleman proposed to settle the difference by
examining where the fathers all harmonize, and abiding by the result
(a task which, as a looker-on observed, would give all the theological
acuteness and learning in the world abundant work for about half a
dozen centuries); whereupon Bishop Reinkens nervously tried to draw the
debaters into the cloud-land of love and unity of purpose, etc., etc.
But here Canon Liddon hastened to the rescue with a carefully-prepared
scheme for effecting the reconciliation of the East and West, which
was apparently received by the Orientals with a tranquil indifference,
and was chiefly remarkable for its adroit semblance of effecting much,
while it in fact does nothing. Yielding here and there a phrase of no
special meaning, it declared in the next clause that it would retain its
own form of the Creed until the dispute should be settled by “a truly
œcumenical council.” This announcement was the signal for an outburst of
disapproval, questions, and objections. “What did Canon Liddon mean by
an œcumenical council?” “An assent of the whole episcopate.” This was
too much for Lord Plunkett, who exclaimed that he would never have come
to the Conference if he had known that it meant to confine the Christian
Church within the bounds of episcopacy. What, he should like to know,
was to hinder Presbyterian ministers from being admitted equally with
bishops to take part in an œcumenical council?
On this the canon obligingly agreed to substitute “the whole church”
for the obnoxious term; but while the assembly hesitated, some paragon
of caution suggested the phrase “sufficient authority.” However, this
masterpiece of conciliation--for nobody could say what it meant--was
rejected for “the whole church,” this latter being equally ambiguous
to those who were adopting it. On this they agreed. As the _Times’_
correspondent observes, “Everybody will agree with everybody else when
all deliberately use words for the purpose of concealing what they mean.
When men differ from each other essentially, it is childish folly to try
to unite them by an unmeaning phrase.”
The great question was that of the procession of the Holy Spirit. On this
M. Osinnin was the chief speaker on behalf of the Greeks, and he seems
to have challenged every interpretation of the Westerns, maintaining
even that _procedit_ was not an exact rendering of ἐκπορεύεται. However,
a committee was appointed, composed of the Germans, two Orientals, an
Englishman, and an American; and Dr. von Döllinger announced to the
Conference on its last sitting that an agreement had been arrived at on
all essential points. The Greeks were to retain their version of the
Nicene Creed, and the Westerns theirs; the latter were to admit that
the _Filioque_ had been improperly introduced, and that both were to
agree that, whichever version they used, their meaning was that the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. With regard to the last
point, however, the Orientals said that although they had personally no
objection to the expression, yet they must decline to give any official
assent to the article until it had been submitted to their synods or
other competent authorities at home.
Judging from every account we have seen (all of them Protestant) of the
Bonn Conference, it is evident that its members, in order to give an
appearance of mutual agreement, subscribed to propositions which may be
taken in various senses. The six articles agreed to by the committee were
couched in the following terms:
“We believe with S. John Damascene, 1, that the Holy Spirit proceeds
from the Father as the beginning, the cause, and the fountain of Deity.
2. That the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son ἐκ τοῦ υίοῦ, and
that for this reason there is in the Godhead only one beginning, one
cause, through which all that is in the Godhead is produced. 3. That the
Holy Spirit is the image of the Son, who is the image of the Father,
proceeding from the Father and resting in the Son, as the outbeaming
power of the latter. 4. The Holy Spirit is the personal bringing forth
of the Father, but belonging to the Son, yet not of the Son, since he
is the Spirit of the Godhead which speaks forth the Word. 5. The Holy
Spirit forms the connecting link between the Father and the Son, and is
united to the Father through the Son. 6. The Holy Spirit proceeds [or, as
amended by Mr. Meyrick, ‘issues’] from the Father through the Son.”
It is the supposed denial of that unity of the αρχή, or originating
principle in the Most Holy Trinity, which has always been the ground of
the Greek objections to the Latin form of the Creed.[205] “The double
_Procession_[206] of the Holy Ghost has always been believed in the
church, only to a certain number of minds it remained for a time obscure,
and thus there are to be found in the writings of the fathers passages in
which mention is made rather of the procession from the Father than of
the double procession from the Father and the Son, but yet none which,
although not formally indicating, exclude or contradict it.
“In recurring to the expressions employed by the fathers, the members of
the Bonn Conference have made choice of some of those which are vague
and least explicit, instead of others which convey to the mind a clear
idea. We are fully aware that, from a historical point of view, the
question of the _Filioque_ presents some difficulties. At Nicæa, in 325,
the question of _procession_ was not even mentioned, from the fact of
its not having up to that time been raised. At Constantinople, in 381,
in order to cut short discussions which were tending to result in a
denial of the Trinity, the addition had been made to the Creed that the
Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father, without mention of the Son. At the
Third Council of Toledo, in 589, the faith of the church in the double
procession was clearly indicated by the addition of the _Filioque_--an
addition, which was adopted by several particular councils, and which
became general in France. The popes, however, foreseeing that the
Orientals--always inclined to be ill-disposed towards the West--would
make this addition an excuse for breaking off into schism, appeared at
first but little in favor of a modification which, although expressing
with greater accuracy the faith of the church, would furnish fresh fuel
to theological disputes. It was a question of prudence. But when the
truth was once placed in peril, they hesitated no longer. All the West
chanted the _Filioque_; and the Greeks themselves, on repeated occasions,
and notably at the Council of Florence in 1438, confessed the double
procession to be an article of the Catholic faith.”
The Old Catholics of Bonn have thus made, as it seems to us, a
retrogression on this question. Will this help to secure “the union
of the Christian churches” which was the object of the Conference? In
outward appearance possibly it may, because all the separated communities
willingly join hand in hand against the true church of Christ; but in
reality, no, for the Greeks will continue to reject the procession
through the Son, as the Anglicans will continue to accept it; and we have
no need to say that the Catholic Church will never cease to confess the
double procession, and to sing: _Qui ex Patre Filioque procedit_.
With regard to other subjects discussed by the meeting at Bonn, we will
briefly mention that Canon Liddon spoke against the invocation of saints,
and Dr. von Döllinger talked of “making a clear sweep” of the doctrine
of purgatory and indulgences; although, in stating the belief of his
co-religionists, he was obliged to reaffirm the doctrine of purgatory in
terms nearly equivalent to those of the Creed of Pope Pius IV. On this
matter, whatever the Greeks might do, how many of the Anglicans would
agree with the Old Catholics? Not only are the people who go to these
conferences from England in no sense representatives of the body to which
they belong, but even they themselves do not always abide by what they
have agreed to.[207] Dean Howson, in a statement he read at the last
Conference, put a Low-Church interpretation on the resolution of last
year’s Conference about the Eucharist, which interpretation Canon Liddon
immediately repudiated. Before Greek or German schismatics can unite with
the Church of England, they will have to make up their minds as to which
of at least four theological systems _is_ Anglicanism, and then to get
_that_ admitted by the other three.
As to the validity of Anglican orders, Dr. von Döllinger appears to have
considered it as resting on the certainty of Parker’s consecration,
without going into the really more important questions of Barlow’s
orders, or the sufficiency of form or intention, all of which are matters
of such grave doubt as to be practically worthless to any one insisting
upon the necessity of _certainty_ that the communion to which he belongs
possesses the apostolic succession.
We cannot conclude this sketch of the Bonn Conference without presenting
our readers with a portrait of its chief, Dr. von Döllinger, drawn by a
friendly hand--that of a French apostate priest, and one of the members
of the Conference--which we reproduce from the pages of the _Indépendance
Belge_.
“M. Döllinger,” he writes, “pronounced three long and eloquent
discourses, marked by that seriousness and depth which so especially
characterize his manner of speaking; but notwithstanding their merit,
they have not resulted in any new conclusion. May not the blame be in
some measure due to M. Overbeck, who … introduced into the discussion
authorities posterior to the epoch of the separation of East and West,
and mingled the question of the seven œcumenical councils with that of
the _Filioque_?… At all events, both obscurity and coldness found their
way into the debates.…
“Truly, this excellent M. Döllinger seems fated to go on from one
contradiction to another, and to accept one year that which he refused
in the preceding. For instance, in 1871, at the congress at Munich,
he energetically opposed the organization of Old-Catholic parishes;
afterwards he resigned himself to consent to this. In 1871 he desired the
Old Catholics to confine themselves, after his example, to protesting
against the excommunication they had incurred; but later on he is willing
that their priests should take upon themselves the full exercise of their
ministry. In 1871 and 1872 he wished to maintain the decisions of the
Council of Trent; in 1873 he decided to abandon them, as well as the
alleged œcumenicity of this council. In 1872 … he considered the attempts
made to establish union between the Old Catholics and the Oriental
churches as at any rate imprudent, if not even compromising. In 1874
he adopted the idea of which he had been so much afraid, and has since
that time used every endeavor to promote the union of the churches. Last
year a proposal [for a committee to examine on what points the earliest
fathers harmonized] was rejected by M. Döllinger with a certain disdain,
as impracticable and even childish. _Now_, however, we find him obliged
to come back to it, at least in part.”[208] “It is by no means in
reproach but in praise that we say this,” continues the writer, adding:
“He accepted with the best grace possible, in one of the sittings of the
Conference this year, the observations of Prof. Osinnin on the manner of
studying texts; and when an erudite and venerable man like M. Döllinger
knows how to correct himself with such humility, he does but raise
himself in the esteem of sincere men.”
We would here venture to observe that when “so erudite” a man as Dr. von
Döllinger, and one who is acknowledged by an entire sect as its most
distinguished doctor and its leader, is so little sure of his doctrine
that he is continually altering it, he and his followers are surely among
the last people who ought to refuse to the Pope the infallibility which
he in fact arrogates to himself in setting himself above an œcumenical
council, as was that of the Vatican.
If the head is represented by one of the members as being in a chronic
state of uncertainty, so are the members themselves represented by
another. In the _Church Review_ (Anglican) for Sept. 18, 1875, is an
article entitled “Old-Catholic Prospects,” the greater part of which
consists of one of the most abusive and malignant attacks against the
Catholic Church, and in an especial manner against the Jesuits, that
it has ever been our lot to come upon, even in the journal in which it
appears. After informing his readers that “Jesuitism has led the Pope
into the egregious heresy of proclaiming his own infallibility,” and
that “the Spirit of Christ, who would not rest in the Vatican Council,
where all was confusion, restraint, and secrecy, (!) has brooded over
the humble (?) Conference of trusting hearts” at Bonn, etc., etc., this
person, with a sudden sobriety, ventures on a closer inspection of the
favored sect for which he had just profanely claimed the guidance of the
Eternal Spirit, while denying it to the œcumenical council where the
whole episcopate of the Catholic Church was assembled with its head, the
Vicar of Christ.
This writer perceives that, “on the other hand, there are dangers in
the future. At present,” he says, “the Old-Catholic body is kept in
order by two master minds--Dr. Döllinger and Prof. Schulte. There are
innumerable elements of discord” (he adds) “manifest enough, but they
are as yet subdued by reverence for Dr. Döllinger, and beat down by the
sledge-hammer will of the lay professor. If either of these pilots were
removed, it is impossible to say into how many fragments Old Catholicism
might split. Its bishop has no means of control over minds, as have
Schulte and Döllinger. Michaelis is simply abusive and violent, ready
to tear down with hands and teeth, but incompetent to build. Repulsive
in personal appearance, his work is that of detraction, denunciation,
and destruction. To human eyes the movement is no movement at all; _it
contains in itself no authority_ to hold its members personally in check;
and yet, in spite of every disadvantage, the Old-Catholic society is the
expression of true feeling,” etc., etc.
But we have dwelt long enough on this picture; let us in conclusion turn
to a very different one. “Rome accepts no compromise; she dictates laws,”
says M. Henri Vignaud,[209] contrasting her in no friendly spirit with
the sect we have been contemplating, but yet in a spirit of calmness and
candor.
And this, which he intends as a reproach, is in reality a commendation.
It is the true church _only_ which _can_ accept no compromise when the
truth is in question, of which she is the faithful depository; and
whatever laws she dictates are to guard the truth, dogmatic or moral,
issued in God’s name and with his authority.
M. Vignaud acknowledges this in the following remarkable manner: “That
cannot be conciliated which is by nature irreconcilable. There can be no
compromise with faith.… Either man forges to himself the truths which
must illuminate his path, or he receives them from the Deity, in which
case he must submit to accept the dogma of infallibility; for without
this the whole theory falls. It is for this reason that the apostolic
Roman Catholicity is so strong. Subordinating reason to faith, it
does not carry within it the germ of any scepticism. There can be no
transacting with it, and whoever goes out of it enters, whether he is
aware of the fact or not, into rationalism, of which the logical outcome
is the elimination of the divine action in human affairs.”[210]
It would be scarcely possible to show more clearly that there are but
two logical positions in the world of intelligences--namely, Catholicity
and scepticism, or, as it is called in the present day, positivism. The
next step after refusing God all action in human affairs is to refuse him
existence.
The Conference at Bonn, however little it may have done in other
respects, has already produced one result which was far from the
intention of its promoters. It has furnished an additional proof that
there is one church only which is capable of resisting the invasion of
scepticism and unbelief, and that this church is the Catholic and Roman.
“_Either Jesus Christ never organized a church, or the Catholic is the
church which he organized._”[211]
MIDNIGHT MASS IN A CONVENT.
I have lately been reading some remarks on the curious association
existing between certain tastes and odors and an involuntary exertion of
the memory by which the recurrence of those tastes or odors recalls, with
a vividness not otherwise to be obtained, a whole series of incidents
of past life--incidents which, with their surrounding scenes, would
otherwise be quite forgotten and buried out of sight by the successive
overlaying of other events of greater interest or importance. Montaigne
has some singular illustrations of this peculiar fact of consciousness,
and there is a brief reference to the subject made in some recently
republished recollections of William Hazlitt. Connected with this is the
powerful influence known to be exercised in many well-authenticated cases
upon the nervous sensibilities by the exhalation of particular perfumes
or the scent of certain kinds of flowers harmless or agreeable to all
other persons. There is a reciprocal motion of the mind which has also
been noted, by which a particular train of thought recalls a certain
taste or smell almost as if one received the impression from the existing
action of the senses. An illustration is given in the discussion just
noted, where a special association of ideas is stated to have brought
back to the writer, with great vividness, the “smell of a baker’s shop
in Bassorah.” Individual experiences could doubtless be accumulated to
show that this mysterious short-hand mind-writing, so to term it, by
means of which the memory records on its tablets, by the aid of a single
sign imprinted upon a particular sense, the history of a long series of
associated recollections, is not confined to the senses of taste and
smell alone, but makes use of all.
The recollection of one of the happiest days of my life--a day of
strong excitement and vivid pleasure, but not carried to the pitch of
satiety--is inseparably associated with the warm, aromatic smell of a
cigar which I lighted and puffed, walking alone down a country road.
In this case the train of thought is followed by the impression on the
sense. But in another instance within my experience the reciprocal action
of thought and sense is reversed; the sight of a particular object in
this latter case invariably bringing back to my mind, with amazing
distinctness, a scene of altogether dissimilar import, lying far back in
the memory. The circumstances are these:
’Tis now some years since I visited the seaport town of Shippington. It
is, or was, one of those sleepy provincial cities which still retain
an ante-Revolutionary odor about its dock-yard and ordnance wharves. A
group of ragged urchins or a ruby-nosed man in greasy and much-frayed
velveteen jacket might be seen any sunny morning diligently fishing for
hours off the end of one of its deserted piers for a stray bite from a
perch or a flounder. The arrival of the spring clipper-ship from Glasgow,
bringing a renewal of stock for the iron merchants, or of a brig with
fruit from the Mediterranean, used to set the whole wharf population
astir. Great changes have taken place of late years. Railroads have been
built. Instead of a single line of ocean steamships, whose fortnightly
arrival was the event of the day, half a dozen foreign and domestic lines
keep the port busy. Fashion, which was once very exclusive and confined
to a few old families, has now asserted its sway over wider ranks,
and the officers of her majesty’s gallant Onety-Oneth, and the heavy
swells of Shippington society whose figures adorn the broad steps of the
Shippington Club-House, have now the pleasure of criticising any fine
morning a (thin) galaxy of female beauty and fashion sweeping by them,
whose _modes_ rival those of Beacon Street or Murray Hill.
But at the time of which I write--when I was a school-boy, a quarter of
a century ago--it had not been much stirred by the march of these modern
improvements. Her Britannic majesty was then young to the throne, and a
great fervor of loyalty prevailed; and when the Royal Welsh Fusileers
used to march down to the parade-ground for morning drill, with the
martial drum-major and its great bearded Billy-Goat, presented by the
queen, dividing the honors of the head of the regiment, it would be
hard to exaggerate the enthusiasm that swelled the bosoms of the small
boys and African damsels who stepped proudly along with the band. Those
were grand days, _quorum pars magna fui_, when I too marched down the
hill from the citadel, with a mind divided between awe and admiration
of the drum-major--curling his mustache fiercely and twirling his staff
with an air of majesty--and a latent terror of the bearded pet of the
regiment, whom report declared to have destroyed three or four boys in
Malta. But rare indeed were those holidays, for I was impounded most
of the time in a college, where the study of the Latin _Delectus_ gave
little opportunity for the pursuit of those more attractive branches
of a liberal education. About half a dozen of the boys, of whom I was
one, were proficients at serving Mass. It was therefore with great joy
at the distinction that we found ourselves named, one frosty Christmas
Eve, to accompany Father W---- to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, about
a mile distant, where he was to celebrate midnight Mass. Oh! how the
snow crisped and rattled under our feet as we marched along, full of
importance, after Father W----, each boy with his green bag, containing
his surplice and _soutane_, swung over his arm! What a jolly night it
was; and how the stars twinkled! We slapped our hands together, protected
by our thick blue mitts, and stamped our feet like soldiers on the march
to Moscow. It was after ten o’clock, and the streets were dark and
nearly deserted. To us, long used to be sound asleep at that hour in
our warm dormitory, each boy in his own little four-poster, with the
moonlight streaming in through the windows on its white counterpane--and
not daring, if we were awake, so much as to whisper to the boy next to
us, under pain of condign punishment in the morning--there was something
mysterious and almost ghostly in this midnight adventure. As we passed
the guard-house near the general’s residence, the officer of the night,
muffled in his cloak, came along on the “grand rounds.” The sentry, in
his tall bear-skin hat, stops suddenly short in his walk.
“Who goes there?” he calls out in a loud, fierce voice, bringing down his
bayonet to the charge.
We clung closer to Father W----’s skirts. “Rounds,” replies the officer
in a voice of command, his sword rattling on the ground, iron-hard with
the frost. “What rounds?” “Grand rounds!” “Advance, grand rounds, and
give the countersign!” Then the sergeant of the guard, the alarm being
given, rushes out into the street with his men, all with bayonets drawn
and looking terrible in the moonlight. They form in line, and the officer
advances. A whispered conversation takes place; the soldiers present arms
and march back into the warm guard-house; and the officer passes silently
on to the next guard.
While this scene was going on we stood half terrified and fascinated,
hardly knowing whether to take to our heels or not. But the calm voice
of Father W----, as he answered “A friend” to the sentry’s challenge,
reassured us. Soon we reached the convent gate, and, entering the
grounds, which were open for the occasion, found the convent all ablaze
with lights. The parents and friends of the young lady pupils were
permitted to attend the midnight Christmas Mass. The convent, and convent
chapel which communicated with it, stood in the midst of winding walks
and lawns very pretty in the summer; but the tall trees, now stripped of
their leaves, swung their bare branches in the wind with a melancholy
recollection of their faded beauty. Groups, in twos and threes, walked
silently up the paths, muffled in cloaks and shawls, and disappeared
within the chapel. We were received by the lady-superior, Mme. P----,
whose kind voice and refined and gentle manners were sadly maligned
by a formidable Roman nose, that struck our youthful minds with awe.
What unprincipled whims does Nature sometimes take thus to impress
upon the countenance the appearance of a character so alien to our
true disposition! Nor is it less true that a beautiful face and a form
that Heaven has endowed with all the charms of grace and fascinating
beauty may hide a soul rank with vice and malice. The Becky Sharpes of
the world are not all as ferret-featured as Thackeray’s heroine, whom,
nevertheless, with much truth to art, he represents as attractive and
alluring in her prime. But dear Mme. P----’s Roman nose was not, I have
reason to believe, without its advantages; the fortuitous severity of
its cast helping to maintain a degree of discipline among her young lady
boarders, which a tendency to what Mr. Tennyson calls “the least little
delicate curve” (_vulgo_, a pug), or even a purely classical Grecian,
might have failed to inspire. Forgive me the treason if I venture even
to hint that those young ladies in white and blue who floated in and out
of Mme. P----’s parlors on reception-days, like angels cut out from the
canvas on the walls, were ever less demure than their prototypes!
We altar-boys were marshalled into a long, narrow hall running parallel
with the chapel. There we busied ourselves in putting on our red
_soutanes_ and white surplices, and preparing the altar for Mass. But
we had a long time to wait, and while we stood there in whispering
silence, and the chapel slowly filled, suddenly appeared Mme. P----
with a lay sister, carrying six little china plates full of red and
white sugar-plums, and some cakes not bigger than a mouthful, to beguile
our tedium. To this day the sight of one of those small plates, filled
with that kind of sugar-plums, brings back to my mind with wonderful
minuteness all the scenes I have described and those that followed. The
long walk through the snow, the guard-house, the convent grounds, the
figures of Mme. P---- and her lay sister advancing towards us, rise
before me undimmed by time; and even now as I write the flavor of the
sugared cassia-buds seems to be in my mouth, though it is over twenty
years ago since I cracked them between my teeth with a school-boy’s
relish for sweetmeats.
The feeling of distant respect engendered by the sight of Mme. P----’s
nose gave way all at once to a profound sympathy and admiration for that
estimable lady, as she handed us those dainties. Yet, as they disappeared
before our juvenile appetites, sharpened by the frost, we could not help
feeling all a boy’s contempt for the girls that could be satisfied with
such stuff, instead of a good, solid piece of gingerbread that a fellow
could get two or three bites at! We had no doubt that the convent girls
had a _congé_ that day, and that this was a part of the feast that had
been provided for them.
We marched gravely into the sanctuary before Father W----, and took our
places around the altar-steps while he ascended the altar. A deeper hush
seemed to fall on the congregation kneeling with heads bowed down before
the Saviour born on that blessed morning. The lights on the altar burned
with a mystical halo at the midnight hour. The roses around the Crib of
the infant Redeemer bloomed brighter than June. We heaped the incense
into the burning censer, and the smoke rushed up in a cloud, and the
odorous sweetness filled the air. Then along the vaulted roof of the
chapel stole the first notes of the organ, now rising, now falling; and
the murmuring voice of the priest was heard reading the Missal. Did my
heart stand still when a boy--or is it touched by a memory later?--as,
birdlike, the pure tones of the soprano rose, filling the church, and
thrilling the whole congregation? Marvellous magic of music! Can we
wonder to see an Arion borne by dolphins over the waves, and stilling
the winds with his lyre? Poor Mme. L----! She had a voice of astonishing
brilliancy and power. Her upper notes I have never heard excelled in
flute-like clearness and sustained roundness of tone. When I heard her
years later, with a more experienced ear, her voice, though a good deal
worn, was still one to be singled out wherever it might be heard. She is
since dead. She was a French lady of good family. Her voice had the tone
of an exile. She sang the _Adeste fideles_ on that Christmas morning with
a soul-stirring pathos that impressed me so much as a boy that the same
hymn, sung by celebrated singers and more pretentious choirs, has always
appeared to me tame.
It would not serve my present purpose to pursue these recollections
farther. Enough has been said to show how quickly the mind grasps at some
one prominent point affected by sense, to group around it a tableau of
associated recollections. That little china tea-plate with its blue and
gilt edge, heaped over with sugar-plums, brings back to me scenes that
seem to belong to another age, so radical is the change which time makes
in the fortunes and even emotions of men.
When the lights were all out in the chapel, except those that burned
around the Crib, and the congregation had silently departed, we wended
our way back to the college with Father W---- in the chill morning air
more slowly than when we started; sleepy, but our courage still unabated
by reason of the great things we had shared in, and the still greater
things separated from us by only one more, fast-coming dawn. We slept
like tops all the morning, being excused from six o’clock Mass on account
of our midnight excursion. When we joined the home circle on Christmas
morning, you may be assured we had plenty to talk about. Nor was it until
after dinner, and all the walnuts had been cracked, and our new pair of
skates--our most prized Christmas gift--tried on and admired, that the
recollection of our first Christmas Mass began to fade from our minds.
Pure hearts and innocent joys of youth! How smooth the stream--_nescius
auræ fallacis_--on which it sails its tiny craft! How rough the sea it
drifts into!
S. LOUIS’ BELL.[212]
S. Louis’ bell!
How grandly swell
Its matin chime,
Its noonday peal,
Its vesper rhyme!
How deeply in my heart I feel
Their solemn cadence; they to me
Waft hymns of precious melody.
S. Louis’ bell!
What memories dwell
Enshrined among
Each lingering note
And tuneful tongue!
As on the quivering air they float,
Those sweet vibrations o’er and o’er
Bear tidings from a far-off shore.
S. Louis’ bell!
What clouds dispel,
What doubts and fears
Dissolve away,
What sorrowing tears,
Like mists before the rising day!
While on the waiting, listening air
Rings out S. Louis’ call to prayer.
S. Louis’ bell!
Ring on and tell
In matin chime,
And noonday peal,
And vesper rhyme,
And let thy joyful notes reveal
The story loved of mortals best--
Of Holy Child on Virgin’s breast,
While herald angels from above
Sang anthems of eternal love!
S. Louis’ bell!
When earth’s farewell
Upon my parting lips shall dwell,
And when I rise
On angel wing
To seek the gates of Paradise,
And stand before the Heavenly King,
Though in that realm of perfect peace
All other earthly sounds should cease,
Methinks ’twould be
A joy to me
Once more to hear,
With bended ear,
The music loved on earth so well--
The echoes of S. Louis’ bell!
FROM CAIRO TO JERUSALEM.
Seated in the spacious hall of the new hotel in Cairo, we discussed a
tour through the Holy Land. We had quitted our comfortable and home-like
_dahabéeah_, wherein we had lived for nearly four months upon the waters
of the historical Nile. A sad farewell had been said to our trusty
sailors, and even those of them who had lingered around the hotel for
days after our arrival, to kiss our hands as we came out, had now taken
their departure. Old Abiad, our funny man, had for once worn a sober look
as he bade us God-speed on our homeward voyage. Said--the indefatigable,
hard-working, muscular Said, ever ready for the hardest work, and ever
foremost in action--had left us with tearful eyes, and had started on his
upward voyage to Keneh, to marry the young Moslem maiden to whom he had
pledged his troth some few months before.
Yes, the Nile trip was really over, but on the tablets of memory was
painted a most bright and beautiful picture, which time alone could
efface. Still another separation: one of our party, having been in the
Holy Land the previous year, was about to remain in Egypt, while the rest
of us visited Syria. Father H----, Mme. D----, and the writer made the
travelling party. The plans were soon settled, and a day was appointed
upon which we should depart from Cairo to meet the Russian steamer which
was advertised to leave Alexandria on Monday, April the 13th, A.D. 1874.
One of the greatest difficulties in travelling in the East is to obtain
accurate information concerning the arrival and departure of steamers
and trains. When inquiring what time the train would leave Cairo for
Rhoda, the terminus of the railway along the Nile, I was informed that
it would leave somewhere about seven o’clock in the morning, and would
reach Rhoda between six and eight in the evening; this was the most
accurate information I could possibly obtain. In point of fact, the
train left Cairo at nine A.M., and reached Rhoda at half-past ten at
night. On Monday morning, April 13, there was a general clearing out of
travellers from the hotel. At nine A.M.--and, for a wonder, punctual to
the minute--we left the station at Cairo on the train going to Ismailïa.
We passed through some of the richest country of the Delta, teeming with
life and activity. The _Sagéars_, or Persian water-wheels, were sending
their streams of life-giving water through the numberless little canals
on every hand. Here a line of laden camels march along with stately step.
There a family--father, mother, and son--accompanied by the omnipresent
donkey, called to mind the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. And well
they may; for here we are in the land of Goshen, at Rameses, the home of
the Israelites, the starting-point of their long, dreary wanderings. Now
the railroad marks the line between the cultivated land and the sandy
plains of the desert; on one side rich vegetation, nurtured by the
fresh-water canal, on the other, sandy hillocks stretching away to the
line of the horizon; and in a few moments we see the deep, rich blue of
the water of Lake Timsah, contrasting most strikingly with the golden
sand of its desert bank. Ismailïa! Ere the train has stopped we are
surrounded by a crowd of Arabs thirsting for their spoil. A score of them
pounce upon our baggage. After considerable shouting and threatening, we
compromise, and a truce is proclaimed. We engaged two of them to carry
our baggage to the steamer on the lake. O porters of the United States!
how you would blush and hang your heads in shame to see these Arabs
handle baggage. In my childish and untravelled simplicity I thought it
most wonderful to see you lift those heavy boarding-houses, miscalled
trunks, and carry them to the fourth story of a hotel. But hereafter,
for porters, commend me to the Arabs. We had four or five heavy valises,
one of them weighing nearly one hundred pounds, and numberless small
parcels. One of the men hung these valises from his neck, and tying the
smaller parcels in among them, as though by way of ornament, started
off, followed by his brother porter, with our only trunk, a large and
very heavy one, strapped on his back. They walked at a brisk pace to the
boat, about one mile distant, and did not seem in the least fatigued when
they arrived there. As we started to walk down the long avenue leading
to the lake, we were beset as usual by the importunities of three or
four donkey-boys, each one recounting the praises of his own animal,
and speaking disparagingly of the others, yet all in the best possible
humor. Running here and there, dragging after them the patient donkey,
they cried out: “Him good donkey, sah; look him. Oder donkey no good; him
back break. Him exquisite donkey, sah! Him Yankee Doodle!” Suddenly, in a
fit of indignation, I turned upon them and howled at the top of my voice:
“Empshy Ya Kelb” (“Get out, O dog!”), when, with a roar of laughter,
one little imp jumped in front of me, and exclaimed: “Oh! Howadji can
speak Arabic. Him good Arab donkey. Take him, sah; him speak Arabic.”
Notwithstanding this great inducement, I did not take him.
Like Aladdin’s palace, Ismailïa has sprung up almost in a single night.
In 1860 the site of the present town was a barren waste of sand; but
when the fresh-water canal was completed to this place, and the magic
waters of the Nile were let loose upon it, the golden sands of the desert
gave place to the rich verdure of vegetation; gardens, filled with the
choicest fruits and flowers, sprang up on every hand. Indeed, it seems
but necessary to pour the waters of the Nile on the desert to produce
a soil which will grow anything to perfection. Here we see the pretty
little Swiss _châlet_ of M. de Lesseps, and a short distance beyond
the palace of the viceroy, built in a few months, for the purpose of
entertaining his illustrious guest at the opening of the Suez Canal.
What singular fellows these Arabs are! Our two porters demand three
rupees (a rupee is worth about fifty cents) for their services. I quietly
take one rupee from my pocket and offer it to them. Indignantly they
reject it; and if I will not give them what they ask, they will accept
nothing at all; and with loud words and angry gestures they shout and
gesticulate most vehemently, complaining of the insignificant pittance
I offer them for the hard work they have just gone through. I repocket
the rupee, and proceed very leisurely to arrange our places on the
little postal boat, which is to leave in about an hour. Having purchased
tickets, and seen that everything was properly arranged, I again return
to the attack, as I am now upon the offensive, and offer them the
rupee. No, they will not have it; but now they will accept two rupees.
Well, it being the rule of Eastern negotiations that as one party comes
down the other should go up, like a balance, I increase the rupee by a
franc, and after much talking they agree to accept it. But now what a
change comes over them! Finding that they have extracted from me all
that they possibly can, their whole manner changes, and they become as
polite and affable as you please. They thank me, proffer their services
to do anything for me that I may wish, kiss their hands in respectful
salutation, and are off.
Our steamer is somewhat larger than a man-of-war’s boat, and our little
company is soon assembled in the cabin. Besides ourselves, there are,
first, a voluble young Russian who came with us from Cairo, and who
precipitates himself most desperately into the strongest friendships
that the time will allow with every one he meets, telling you all about
himself and his family, and then finding out as much as he can about
you and yours; next, a stolid Saxon, Prussian vice-consul at Cairo, a
very pleasant and intelligent young man; and, lastly, a quiet, retiring
young Italian lady, who, unable to speak any language besides her own,
cannot join in the general conversation, which is carried on principally
in French. At six o’clock we left the landing-place at Ismailïa, and,
passing out the northeast corner of Lake Timsah, we entered the narrow
cutting of El Guisr. The surface of these heights is the highest point in
the Isthmus of Suez, being from sixty to sixty-five feet above the level
of the sea. In cutting the canal through this part they were obliged to
dig down some ninety feet, in order to give the canal its proper depth
below the sea level. Just after we entered this cutting, the strong north
wind which was blowing at the time caught madame’s parasol, whirled it
out of her hand, blew it overboard, and the last we saw of it it was
floating placidly along toward Suez. One sees here how perceptibly the
sand is filling up the hard-won trench, and the dredging-machines are
kept in constant operation to keep the channel clear. At dusk we passed a
large English steamer tied up for the night--as large steamers are never
allowed to travel in the canal after dark.
We soon entered Lake Menzaleh, and continued through it some twenty-seven
miles to Port Said. Fifteen years ago a belt of sand, from six to nine
hundred feet in width, occupied the place where Port Said now stands.
Here in April, 1859, M. de Lesseps, surrounded by a handful of Europeans
and a score of native workmen, gave the first blow of the spade to that
great channel of communication between the East and the West. Soon the
ground for the future town was made, houses erected, gardens laid out,
and to-day Port Said is a town of nearly ten thousand inhabitants, with
streets, squares, gardens, docks, quays, mosques, churches, and a very
safe and easily-approached harbor. The name Port Said was given to it in
honor of the then viceroy, Said Pasha. The next morning, when I went to
the office to purchase tickets, I was informed, by the not over-polite
clerk in the Russian Steamship Co.’s office, that notwithstanding it was
advertised that the steamer would leave Alexandria on Monday, it would
not leave until Tuesday, and consequently would not leave Port Said
until Wednesday afternoon--another illustration of the uncertainty of
travelling information in the East. In the afternoon I determined to go
down to the lake and endeavor to shoot some flamingoes or pelicans, both
of which abound here in great numbers. Leaving the town, I started to
cross the wide, level plain which separated it, as I supposed, from the
lake. Some distance ahead I saw numerous birds disporting themselves amid
the glistening and sparkling waters of the lake. After walking for nearly
an hour, I reached the spot, but no lake was there, and turning around, I
saw it at the point from which I had started. Somewhat confused, I turned
towards the sea, and there I saw, high up in the air, a sand-bank with
women walking upon it, and a little further on two gigantic figures like
light-houses moving toward me in the air. In a moment the truth flashed
upon me--it was a mirage; and retracing my steps to the town, I found
that the lake was in a different direction from the one I had taken. The
next day we went on board the steamer, which arrived from Alexandria
about ten in the morning. There is considerable excitement on board, and
a number of smart-looking boats with trim crews rapidly approaching
us announce the arrival of M. de Lesseps with his wife and her two
nieces, _en route_ for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. M. de Lesseps is
a man of medium height, rather stout, and with a very good-natured and
jovial-looking countenance. He wears a heavy gray mustache, and his
hair is silvery white. His appearance is that of a man of great energy
and determination, and one to project and carry through the colossal
work he has so successfully executed. The ship was very much crowded,
or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the accommodations were
very limited, as we did not have more than fifty first-class passengers
on board, and yet there were not sufficient accommodations for them in
the first cabin. Father H---- and I, together with a young Austrian with
whom we had become acquainted at Port Said, were obliged to sleep in
a second-class cabin. We were told that they would so arrange it that
we could eat in the first saloon, and at dinner-time we found a small
work-table set for four of us to eat from. However, it was quite large
enough for me; for I had not been seated many minutes before I felt an
unaccountable desire to go on deck and inhale the fresh air.
Having done so, I retired for the night. Bright and early the next
morning I was upon deck, but I found Father H---- there before me.
Madame, having a very comfortable room in the first cabin, had not
yet risen. The sea was still and calm as a pond, and, turning my face
toward the east, I beheld for the first time the mountain ranges of
Judæa. Yea, there before me was Judæa, the land promised and given to
the seed of Abraham. There, among those hills, Samson had performed his
exploits of power. There the royal David and the wise Solomon had lived
and reigned. Ay, and there One greater than them all, the Man-God, was
born, lived, and laid down his life for the salvation of mankind. And
was it really true that I, an inquisitive Yankee of the XIXth century,
was soon to tread those sacred spots, hallowed with reminiscences so
dear to the heart of every Christian? I could scarce believe it. Was I
not in a dream, and would I not soon awake to find it all a beautiful
but fleeting vision? No, it was true, and it was made most painfully
apparent by the harsh clangor of the Arab boatmen, and their frantic
endeavors to take possession of us, as our ship dropped anchor off the
town of Jaffa. There is no harbor of any kind here, and when the sea is
calm the steamers anchor about one mile from the shore, and passengers
and their baggage are landed in small boats. Immediately in front of the
town, and but a short distance from it, a series of partially-covered
rocks forms a wall, broken only by two channels or gateways, one about
ten feet in width, and the other a little wider. Through these the sea
dashes with tremendous fury, and as the little boat approaches it is
caught upon the summit of some breaker, and dashed through the opening
into the quiet haven behind. When it is stormy, the steamers do not stop
here at all, but land their passengers a short distance farther up the
coast. The bright, genial face of Father Guido (president of the Casa
Nuova) soon welcomed us to Palestine. He had come down from Jerusalem to
meet M. de Lesseps, and to offer him the hospitality of their convent,
which was thankfully accepted. We soon disembarked and entered a small
boat, accompanied by our trusty dragoman, Ali Aboo Suleyman, who had
travelled with one of our party the previous year, and whom I believe
to be one of the best dragomans in the East. Our boat, propelled by the
strong arms of a half-score of powerful Arabs, soon brought us alongside
of the town. Passing through a narrow gateway, and giving a substantial
and material wink to the revenue official, we, with our baggage, were
soon deposited at the door of the Latin convent. After greeting the kind
and hospitable fathers, and arranging terms with Ali, we started out
for a short walk. Traversing the narrow, tortuous streets and filthy
alleys, jostled by camels, horses, donkeys, and preceded by Achmud,
Ali’s youngest son--a lad of fourteen years, who, with a pompous and
authoritative air, pushed aside old men and young, women and children,
and would have done the same with the camels had he been able, to make
room for the Howadji--we reached the spot where stood in former days the
house of Simon the tanner. Here the Apostle Peter resided many days,
and here he saw the vision of the clean and unclean beasts, wherein
the voice commanded him saying: “Arise, Peter, kill and eat.” A small
mosque now occupies the site of the house. The streets were thronged
with Russian pilgrims returning from their Easter pilgrimage to the Holy
City. Many of them will leave in the afternoon on the steamer which
has brought us from Egypt, and in a few short days will be at Odessa,
whence the railway will carry them to St. Petersburg. About three in the
afternoon, accompanied by an Irish priest who had lived in Malta for
several years, we mounted our horses and started for Jerusalem. We had
been most hospitably entertained by the kind fathers at the convent; a
large room and an excellent breakfast had been provided for us, but no
remuneration asked. We, of course, made a donation, which was thankfully
received. We rode through the narrow streets, passed out the gate, and
in a few moments were among the world-famous orange-groves of Jaffa. The
sky was cloudless, the weather like a beautiful May day at home, and
the air heavy with the delicious fragrance of the oranges. We rode for
nearly a mile through these beautiful groves. Meanwhile, Ali provided
himself with numbers of these large oranges, and soon for the first time
I tasted an orange that I really enjoyed. Just plucked from the tree,
with skin half an inch in thickness, and without seeds, this luscious
fruit seems almost to dissolve in the mouth like ice-cream. Ali owns a
large grove, from which he gathers about one hundred and fifty thousand
oranges per annum. These he sells in large quantities at the rate of two
pounds sterling per thousand, yielding him a very nice income, as the
expense of taking care of them is very small. Now we are riding along
the level plain which separates the Judæan hills from the bright blue
waters of the Mediterranean, and a little after six o’clock we drew rein
at the Latin convent in Ramleh. It is almost useless for me to speak of
the kindness and hospitality of these good Franciscan fathers of the Holy
Land, as it is known throughout the world, and abler pens than mine have
endeavored, but in vain, to praise them as they deserve. Unselfish,
kind, burying self completely in the great work they have undertaken,
they have given up their homes, families, and all that was dear to them,
to live a monastic life among these sacred spots, to guard these holy
places, and, like ministering angels, to assist pilgrims from every
clime and of every Christian race and nationality. Clad in the humble
garb of their order, they go quietly and unostentatiously through life,
sacrificing themselves at every turn for the benefit and comfort of
others. They have stood through centuries, a devoted band of chivalrous
knights guarding the spots rendered sacred by the presence of their God.
May he in his goodness reward them by permitting them to stand as a noble
guard of honor around his celestial throne in the heavenly hereafter!
After a comfortable night’s rest and a good breakfast, we started at six
o’clock, in order to avoid the intense heat of midday. M. de Lesseps and
party had preceded us by nearly two hours. As we rode out the convent
gate, numbers of lepers, with shrunken limbs and distorted countenances,
clamored piteously for alms. We dropped some small coins into their tin
boxes, which they carry so that there may be no possibility of contact
with the compassionate passer-by who may bestow alms upon them. We
rode for some time across a level plain, and near ten o’clock reached
Bab-el-Wady (Gate of the Valley), at the foot of the mountain range. Here
we found a very comfortable house, which has been erected for the sake of
affording accommodation to pilgrims. We lunched here, took a short nap,
and started on our way about two in the afternoon. The whole distance
from Jaffa to Jerusalem is not over thirty-six miles; but fast riding is
not practicable on account of the baggage, which is transported on mules
at a very slow pace; consequently, it generally requires two days to
make the trip, whereas a moderately fast horse could easily accomplish
the journey in seven or eight hours. We now enter Wady Ali. One could
scarcely imagine a more suitable place for lurking bandits to conceal
themselves in than among the thick undergrowth here. Their musket-barrels
might almost touch their unconscious victim’s breast, without being
visible, and many a tale has been told and retold around the Howadji’s
camp-fire of their exploits of robbery and murder in this place. But now,
thanks to the strict though tardy vigilance of the sultan, the pass is
free from danger.
What feelings of emotion now fill my breast! The dreams of my childhood
are being realized--I am in the Holy Land! Reaching the summit of one of
the ridges, a beautiful panorama is spread out before us. At our feet
lies the valley of Sharon, dressed in the richest green, and ornamented
with the bright, beautiful wild flowers of early spring; beyond lies the
plain of Ramleh, and in the distance, like a silver frame, sparkles and
glistens the bright waters of the Mediterranean. Anon we see beneath
us the beautiful valley of Beit Hanina, and Ali, laying one hand on my
shoulder, points to a little village nestled amid the olive-groves in
the valley. Yes, that is Ain-Karim, the place of the Visitation of the
Blessed Virgin--the spot where was born the “greatest of men.” We check
our horses but for a moment; we have no eyes for that now. Every gaze is
fixed upon that small yellow house upon the top of the opposite hill;
for has not Ali told us that from that point we shall see the Eternal
City? Riding rapidly down the mountain-side, we do not even stop as we
cross the brook--where David gathered the pebbles with which he slew his
gigantic adversary--and push rapidly up the opposite mountain. Father
H---- and I are in advance, while madame rides behind with the Irish
priest. The shades of evening are now falling, and I fear lest night
may come on before we reach the city. Scarce a word is spoken; my heart
beats with excitement, such as it has never known before, and seems as
though it would break through its prison-house, so eager, so anxious, is
it to move quickly on. Unable to restrain my impatience, I give my horse
a blow with my riding-whip, and he starts on a full run. Father H----
calls me back. We have travelled so long and shared so many pleasures
together, let us together share the great pleasure of the first sight of
Jerusalem. I rein in my horse, and ride by his side. Now the top of the
hill is reached, and it is yet light; but we have mistaken the house--it
is another one still farther on. It is now twilight. We speak not a word,
but, bent forward, we scan the horizon with piercing eyes, as though we
would penetrate the mountains themselves, so eager are we to see the
city. I hail a passing boy: “Fin el Kuds?” (“Where is Jerusalem?”),
but with a stupid stare he passes on. A few moments more the house is
reached, and Sion, royal city of David, lies before us! Waiting until the
rest of the party ride up, we dismount, kneel, kiss the ground, and then
recite aloud the psalm _Lætatus Sum_, a Pater Noster, and an Ave Maria,
remount, enter the city by the Jaffa gate, ride to our comfortable
quarters at the Latin Hospice, and _are in Jerusalem_.
At the convent we were entertained in the most hospitable manner, and
provided with the neatest and tidiest of rooms. Early the next morning
Father H---- and I sallied forth to call on Père Ratisbonne. Following
the Via Sacra, we stopped before an iron gate a short distance below the
arch Ecce Homo, and little Achmud, picking up a large stone, pounded
upon it as though he were repaying a grudge which he had cherished
against it for centuries. I ventured to remonstrate, suggesting that they
might be displeased at so much noise being made. But he answered very
coolly--meanwhile continuing the pounding as if his future happiness
depended upon making a hole in the door--that he wanted to inform those
inside that some visitors wished to call upon them. I said nothing, but
doubted seriously whether that would be the impression produced on their
minds. Had it been in America, and had I been inside, I should have
imagined that it was an election row, or a fire during the reign of the
volunteer fire department. But notwithstanding all this, no one appeared,
and we moved away disgusted, only to find that we had been at the wrong
place, and to be farther informed that Père Ratisbonne was in Paris.
What shall I say of the sacred spots of Jerusalem, which so many abler
pens than mine have attempted to describe?--vainly endeavoring to portray
the inexpressible emotions that crowd the breast of every Christian as he
kneels before them for the first time! Perhaps I can convey to my readers
some idea of the feeling which continually pervaded my whole being. It
was as if the curtain of the past had been rolled back, placing me face
to face with the living actors in that great tragedy of our Redemption
eighteen hundred years ago. What contributed in a great measure to this
was that we had lived during the winter in an atmosphere of three or
four thousand years ago. We had scarcely esteemed it worth while to look
at the ruins of the Ptolemys, they seemed so recent after the massive
temples of the Rameses and the Ositarsens, and now the beginning of
the Christian era appeared but an affair of yesterday. The Adamic and
Mosaic dispensations seemed a little old, ’tis true, but the Christian
dispensation was yet to us in all the glory of its early morn. I felt,
as I crossed the Kedron and read the Holy Gospels seated beneath the
olive-trees in the garden of Gethsemane, as if even I had been a personal
follower of the Man-God, and in imagination could hear the hosannas of
praise as he rode past me on the ass on the way from Bethany. Before this
religion had seemed to me more like an intellectual idea. Now I felt that
I knew Him as a friend, and my heart beat earnest acquiescence to Father
H----’s remark: “Coming from Egypt, Christ appears a modern personage;
and the visit to the sacred places of Palestine adds to the intellectual
and moral conviction of the truth of Christianity, the feeling and
strength of personal friendship with its Author.”
On Sunday Father H---- celebrated Mass at the altar erected on the spot
where the Blessed Virgin stood during the Crucifixion. The hole in the
rock wherein the sacred cross was planted belongs to the Greeks, and
over it they have erected an altar, loaded down, like all their other
altars, with tawdry finery. On another occasion I had the happiness to
serve Father H----’s Mass on the spot where our Lord was nailed to the
cross. But the greatest happiness of all was reserved for the morning
we left the Holy City, when madame and I received Holy Communion from
the hands of Father H----, who celebrated Mass, which I served, in the
Holy Sepulchre itself. _Hic Jesus Christus sepultus est._ In that little
tomb the three of us, who had shared together the pleasures and dangers
of a long voyage in Egypt and Nubia--here on the very spot where He was
entombed, we alone, in early morn, received his sacred body and blood,
giving fresh life and courage to our souls for our future struggles with
the world. How much better, instead of incrusting the sepulchre with
marble and gems, to have left it as it was, rude and simple as when the
Man-God was laid in it! But one sacred spot is left in its primitive
state--the grotto of the Agony. A simple altar has been erected in it,
and a marble tablet let into the wall with this inscription upon it: “Hic
factus est sudor ejus sicut guttæ sanguinis decurrentis in terram.” The
walls and roof of the grotto are to-day as they were that terrible night
when they witnessed the sweat as drops of blood rolling down his sacred
face.
The limits of this article will not permit me to tell how we wandered
reverentially along the Via Sacra, or gazed in admiration from Olivet’s
summit on Jerusalem the Golden lying at our feet; of our interesting
visit to the residence of the Princesse de La Tour d’Auvergne, on the
spot where the apostles were taught the Lord’s Prayer, which she has
inscribed on the court-yard walls in every written language. I could
tell of our visit to the _Cœnaculum_ to the Temple, the tomb of the
Blessed Virgin, our walks through the Valley of Jehoshaphat; but these
descriptions are so familiar to every Christian that I will content
myself with relating more of the personal incidents which befell us than
general descriptions of what we saw.
Father H---- and I left Jerusalem on Tuesday morning, and, after riding
several hours, camped for the night near the Greek convent of Mars
Saba. No woman is allowed to enter this convent, and men only with
permission of the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem. We visited the tomb of
S. Saba, model of anchorites, and saw in one room the skulls of fourteen
thousand of his brethren, most of them massacred by the Bedouins. Rev.
Mr. Chambers, of New York, with two young friends, was encamped near
us, and we spent a very pleasant evening in their tent. At five o’clock
the next morning we were in the saddle, _en route_ for the Dead Sea.
We had a Bedouin escort, who was attired in a dilapidated, soiled
night-shirt, and was scarcely ever with us, either taking short cuts down
the mountain-side--as he was on foot--and getting far in advance of us,
or lagging equally as far in the rear. Nevertheless, it was a powerful
escort--had we not paid the sheik of the tribe five dollars for it? and
did it not represent the force and power of a mighty tribe of Bedouins?
In sober earnest, this hatless, shoeless escort was a real protection;
for if we had been attacked while he was with us, his tribe, or the
sheik of it, would have been forced by the authorities to make good our
loss, and, moreover, the attacking tribe would have incurred the enmity
of our escort’s tribe--a very serious thing in this part of the world,
and among men whose belief is: Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall
his blood be shed. The Bedouins find this way of robbing travellers more
profitable than the old-time system of taking their victim’s property
_vi et armis_, for in the latter instance they are liable to be pursued,
caught, and punished; while in the former, by exacting a fee from the
traveller and furnishing an escort in return, they make considerable
money without fear of punishment. While riding along toward the Dead Sea,
I frequently dismounted to shoot partridges, and on remounting I took
out the cartridges which had not been used, before handing my gun to the
escort, who carried it for me. On one occasion, when near the Dead Sea,
I had pursued several partridges, but did not get a shot at them, and
returning to my horse, held by the escort, I was about to draw out the
cartridges when he requested me to let them remain, so that I should not
have the trouble of reloading for the next shot. I shook my head with a
negative motion, when he replied in an humble tone: “Very well. I am a
Bedouin, and of course you cannot trust me.” And then flashed across my
mind that terrible curse pronounced upon Ishmael and his descendants:
“His hand shall be against every man, and every man’s against him.”
Feeling sorry for the poor fellow, I looked him straight in the eye, as
though expressing my confidence in him, and handed him the loaded gun.
I was alone with him now, as the rest of the party had ridden on a mile
or two in advance. But I felt perfectly safe, because he was walking
ahead of me, and, had he meditated treachery, I had my revolver in my
belt, and could have killed him before he could raise the gun to shoot.
However, I presume that he simply wanted to play sportsman himself; for
when he returned me the gun, some hours afterwards, both barrels were
empty. About ten o’clock we reached the barren shores of the Dead Sea,
passing, very close to it, numberless heaps of cinders, indicating a
recent Bedouin encampment. We took a long bath in these buoyant waters.
I sank as far as my neck, and then walked through the water as though on
land. I remained nearly an hour in the water without touching the bottom.
It is very difficult to swim, as, when one assumes the swimming position,
the legs are thrown half out of the water. These waters, covering the
site of Sodom and Gomorrha, are clear as crystal, yet to the taste are
bitter as gall. Riding along the plain for a short hour, we entered the
luxurious vegetation on the banks of the Jordan, and dismounted near the
place where S. John baptized our Lord. Swift-flowing, muddy, turbulent
Jordan! shall I ever forget thee or the pleasant swim I had in thy sweet
waters? Father H---- and I dozed for about an hour, took a lunch, and
then, remounting, rode across the level plain of Jericho, and about five
o’clock reached our tent, pitched on the site of ancient Jericho, at the
foot of the Mount of Temptation, where Satan would tempt our Lord with
the vain, fruitless riches of this world. After dinner we walked a short
distance, and sat down on the limb of a tree overhanging the sweet waters
of the heaven-healed fountain of Elisha. Surrounded by armed Bedouins,
who watched our every motion with eager curiosity, and occasionally in
plaintive tones requested _backsheesh_, we passed a delightful hour
recalling the sacred reminiscences connected with the spots around us.
Behind us a crumbling ruin marks the site of once proud Jericho--the
city to which the warlike Joshua sent the spies from the Moabitish hills
beyond the Jordan; the city destroyed by the Israelitish trumpet-blast,
and against which the terrible curse was pronounced: “Cursed be the
man before the Lord that riseth up, and buildeth this city Jericho: he
shall lay the foundation thereof in his first-born, and in his youngest
son he shall set up the gates of it”--a curse which was most fearfully
fulfilled. Yonder Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Far away in
the distance the Dead Sea, hemmed in by its mountain banks, lies calm and
placid in the dying sunset. At our feet is the broad plain of Jericho,
and at our back the mountains of Judæa. How singular it must have seemed
to the Israelites when they first saw mountains covered with trees and
verdure! In their old Egyptian home they had seen but sand-mountains, the
vegetation in no place extending beyond the level ground; and now for the
first time after their dreary desert wanderings they saw the vegetation
creeping up the mountain-side even to its summit, and thousands of sheep
browsing upon it on every hand. Early the next morning we were in the
saddle, _en route_ for Jerusalem, and, passing the spot where the good
Samaritan ministered to the poor man who had fallen among thieves, we
reached Bethany about noon. Procuring some tapers from an old woman, we
descended into the tomb from which the voice of his God had called forth
the dead Lazarus. A flight of steps leads down some distance into a small
chamber, which is to-day in the same condition as when Martha’s brother,
arising from the dead, testified to the assembled crowd the power of
Jesus of Nazareth. From here we ascended Olivet, and from its summit
looked with admiration upon the beautiful panorama spread out beneath us,
and lunched under the venerable olive-trees, which perhaps had cast their
shade upon the weary form of our Saviour, and had witnessed the glorious
miracle of his Ascension. Soon after we reached our convent home.
The Jews in the Holy City are much fairer than their brethren in America.
They wear the old-time gabardine, belted at the waist and extending to
the ankles; on the head a high black felt hat with broad brim, while two
curls hang down the cheek on either side. They are a sorrowful-looking
race, fascinating to gaze upon as connected with the great Drama, yet
inspiring me at the same time with a feeling of disgust which I could
not control. How striking a picture of their degradation and fall from
their once proud estate as the chosen ones of God, is shown as they
gather on Fridays to their wailing-place; five courses of large bevelled
stones being all that remain of Solomon’s grand Temple! Here are Jews
of all ages and of both sexes, crying bitterly over fallen Jerusalem.
Old men, tottering up, bury their faces in the joints and cavities, and
weep aloud as though their hearts were breaking, while in chorus comes
the low, plaintive wail of the women. In and among, and around and about
them, with shouts of mirth and laughter, play the children of the Arab
conquerors. The Jews are permitted to weep here unmolested.
On Sunday afternoon, accompanied by Father Guido, we went to Bethlehem.
We passed the night in the Latin convent, and the next morning madame
and I received Holy Communion from the hands of Father H----, who
celebrated Mass in the Crib of the Nativity, on the spot where the Wise
Men stood when adoring the new-born Babe. The very spot where Christ
was born is marked by a silver star, with this inscription upon it:
“Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus Natus est.” The star belongs to
the Latins, but the altar over it to the Greeks, who have several times
attempted to carry off the star, but unsuccessfully. They, of course,
will not permit the Latins to celebrate Mass upon the altar. The Greeks,
being more powerful, are continually harassing and heaping all sorts of
indignities upon the Latins, who are obliged to submit to them. Shame
upon the Catholic nations of Europe--nations which in bygone times sent
forth those noble bands of Crusaders, sacrificing their lives to rescue
the holy places from infidel hands! But Easter a year ago they destroyed
the valuable hangings in the Holy Crib, presented to the Latins by the
French government, and stole two pictures from their altars valued at
six thousand dollars apiece. Nay, more than this: they even severely
wounded with a sword the Franciscan brother who endeavored to prevent
the execution of their nefarious designs. And again the past Easter, but
a few days before we were there, witnessed another of these terrible
scenes of barbarism and inhumanity. A number of unoffending pilgrims,
just returned from their annual Easter visit to the Jordan, were denied
entrance by the Greeks to the basilica over the Holy Crib. And when they
insisted upon entering the church--which is common property, and in
which they had a perfect right to go--and attempted to force their way
in, they were arrested by the Turkish governor of Bethlehem--who is in
league with the Greeks--under the pretext that they were inciting to
riot, and cast into a loathsome dungeon in Jerusalem. But, thanks to the
exertions of M. de Lesseps, they were subsequently released.
I rode over to the hill where the shepherds watched their flocks that
eventful night when the angels announced to them the “glad tidings of
great joy.” In the afternoon we rode across the mountains to Ain-Karim,
the birth-place of S. John the Baptist.
The women in this part of the country, but particularly in Bethlehem and
its vicinity, carry all their fortunes on their heads. Dressed in the
picturesque garb of the Moabitish women, their coins are hung in great
numbers from their caps. One young mother, with her babe in her arms,
and with her cap almost covered with rows of gold coins, approached me
at Ain-Karim, and begged me in a piteous tone for a copper, and appeared
delighted when I gave it to her. They would almost sooner starve than
part with these coins, in which they take great pride; but I imagine that
after they are married their husbands find means of obtaining possession
of them, and then they get into general circulation again. We went to see
the scene of the Visitation, over which an altar had been erected in the
early ages of Christianity, but which had been concealed for centuries,
and only accidentally discovered of late by the Latins in renovating
their church. Alongside the altar is the impression of a baby in the
rock. It is said that when Herod’s soldiers came to the house of S.
Elizabeth to execute their master’s murderous commands to massacre the
little innocents, the saintly mother pressed her infant against the wall,
which opened, received him, and then, closing again, hid him from view;
and thus was he saved to grow up a voice crying in the wilderness, “Make
straight the way of the Lord.” We spent the night in the convent built
on the site of the house where was born this “greatest of men.” The next
day we returned to Jerusalem, visiting _en route_ the Greek church on the
spot where grew the tree from which the sacred cross was made.
Shortly after this we left the Holy City, soon bade farewell to our
trusty dragoman, and embarked on the _Tibre_ at Jaffa, bound for
Marseilles. Oh! what impressions were made upon me by my short sojourn
among those sacred places. How my faith was strengthened, and my love and
devotion increased, and how earnestly and often I wished, and still wish,
that each and every one I know could see what I have seen and feel as I
now feel!
A CHRISTMAS VIGIL.
“One aim there is of endless worth,
One sole-sufficient love--
To do thy will, O God! on earth,
And reign with thee above.
From joys that failed my soul to fill,
From hopes that all beguiled,
To changeless rest in thy dear will,
O Jesus! call thy child.”
Exeter Beach was divided into two distinct parts by a line of cliff
jutting far out into Exeter Bay. Below the eastern face of the cliff
lay the Moore estate, and then came the town; but on the west side was
an inlet, backed by dense woods, and bounded on the farther extremity
by another wall of rock. This was known as Lonely Cove, and deserved
its title. From it one looked straight out to the open sea; no island
intervened, nor was anything visible on shore save the two long arms of
frowning rock, the circuit of pine coming close to the edge of drift-wood
that marked the limit of the tide, and, at the far distance, a solitary
house. This had once been occupied by a man who made himself a home apart
from every one, and died as lonely as he lived; since then it had been
deserted, and was crumbling to decay, and many believed it to be haunted.
Along this beach, about three o’clock one Christmas Eve, Jane Moore was
walking. It was a dull afternoon, with a lowering sky, and a chill in the
air which foreboded rain rather than snow; but, wrapped in her velvet
cloak and furs of costly sable, Jane did not heed the weather.
Her heart was full to overflowing. From the first Christmas that she
could remember to the one previous to his death, she had taken that
walk with her father every Christmas eve, while he talked with her of
the joy of the coming day, sang to her old Christmas carols, and sought
to prepare her for a holy as well as a merry feast. He had tried to be
father and mother both to his motherless girl, but his heart ached as he
watched her self-willed, imperious nature, often only to be curbed by her
extreme love for him.
“Be patient, my friend,” the old priest who knew his solicitude used to
say. “It is a very noble nature. Through much suffering and failure, it
may be, but _surely_, nevertheless, our Jane will live a grand life yet
for the love of God.” And so James Moore strove to believe and hope, till
death closed his eyes when his daughter was only thirteen years old.
Heiress of enormous wealth, and of a beauty which had been famous in that
county for six generations, loving keenly all that was fair, luxurious,
and intellectual, Jane Moore was one of the most brilliant women of her
day. Dancing and riding, conversation and music--she threw herself into
each pursuit by turn with the same whole-hearted _abandon_ which had ever
characterized her. Yet the priest who had baptized her, and who gave her
special, prayerful care and direction, laid seemingly little check upon
her. Such religious duties as were given her she performed faithfully;
she never missed the daily Mass or monthly confession; not a poor cottage
in the village in which she was not known and loved, though as yet she
only came with smiles and money and cheery words, instead of personal
tendance and real self-denial. No ball shortened her prayers, no sport
hindered her brief daily meditation. The priest knew that beyond all
other desires that soul sought the Lord; beyond all other loves, loved
him; and that she strove, though poorly and imperfectly and with daily
failure, to subject her will to the higher will of God. To have drawn
the curb too tightly then might have been to ruin all; the wise priest
waited, and, while he waited, he prayed.
This Christmas Eve on which Jane Moore was speeding along the beach
was the last she would ever spend as a merry girl in her old home. As
a wife, as a mother, she might come there again, but with Epiphany her
girlhood’s days must end. Her heart, once given, had been given wholly,
and Henry Everett was worthy of the gift; but the breaking of old ties
told sorely upon Jane, who always made her burdens heavier than need be
by her constant endeavor to gain her own will and way. Her handsome face
looked dark and sallow that afternoon; the thin, quivering nostrils and
compressed lips told of a storm in her heart.
“I cannot understand it,” she said aloud. “_Why_ must I go away? Surely
it was right to wish to live always in my old home among my father’s
people. _Why_ should God let Henry’s father live and live and live to be
ninety years old, and he be mean and troublesome? and _why_ should my
dear father die young, when I needed him? I cannot bear to go away.”
And then came to her mind words said to her that very day--few words, but
strong, out of a wise and loving heart--“God asks something from you this
Christmas, in the midst of your joy, which I believe he will ask from
you, in joy or sorrow, all your life long until he gets it. He wants the
entire surrender of your will. I do not know how he will do it, but I
am sure he will never let you alone till he has gained his end. Make it
your Christmas prayer that he will teach you that his will is better and
sweeter than anything our wills may crave.”
She flew faster along the beach, striving by the very motion to find
relief for the swelling of her heart.
“I cannot bear it,” she cried--“to have always to do something I do not
want to do! I cannot bear it. Yes, I can, and I will. God help me! But I
cannot understand.”
On, on, faster still, sobs choking her, tears blinding her. “I wanted so
much to live and die here. God must have known it, and what difference
could it make to him?”
“Don’t ye! Don’t ye, Tom! Ye’ve no right. Ye mustn’t, for God’s sake.”
The words, in a woman’s shrill voice, as of one weak with fasting or
illness, yet strong for the instant with the strength of a great fear or
pain, broke in upon Jane’s passion, and, coming to herself, she found
that she was close to the Haunted House. Fear was unknown to her; in an
instant she stood within the room.
Evidently some tramp, poorer than the poorest, had sought shelter--little
better than none, alas!--in the wretched place. A haggard woman was
crouching on a pile of sea-weed and drift-wood, holding tightly to
something hidden in the ragged clothing huddled about her, striving
to keep it--whatever it might be--from the grasp of a desperate,
half-starved man who bent over her.
“Gie it to me,” he cried. “I tell ye, Poll, I’ll have it, that I wull,
for all ye. And I’ll trample it, and I’ll burn it, that I wull. No more
carrying o’ crucifixes for we, and I knows on’t. Gie us bread and
butter, say I, and milk for the babby there.”
“Nay, nay, Tom,” the woman pleaded. “It’s Christmas Eve. He’ll send us
summat the night, sure. Wait one night, Tom.”
“Christmas! What’s him to we? Wait! Wait till ye starve and freeze
to death, lass; but I’ll not do’t. There’s no God nowhere, and no
Christmas--it’s all a sham--and there sha’n’t be no crucifixes neither
where I bes. Ha! I’s got him now, and I’ll have my own way, lass.”
“Stop, man!” Jane stood close beside him, with flashing eyes and her
proud and fearless face. “Give me the crucifix,” she said.
But she met eyes as fearless as her own, which scanned her from head to
foot. “And who be you?” he asked.
“Jane Moore,” she answered, with the ring that was always in her voice
when she named her father’s honored name.
“And what’s that to me?” the man exclaimed. “Take’s more’n names to save
this.” And he shook the crucifix defiantly.
“Stop, stop!” Jane cried. “I will pay you well to stop.”
“Why then, miss?”
“Your God died on a cross,” Jane answered. “You shall not harm his
crucifix.”
“Speak for yourself, miss! Shall not? My wull’s as strong as yours, I’ll
warrant. God! There’s no God; else why be ye in velvets and her in rags?
That’s why I trample this ’un.”
In another moment the crucifix would have lain beneath his heel; but Jane
flung herself on her knees. All pride was gone; tears rained from her
eyes; she, who had been used to command and to be obeyed, pleaded like a
beggar, with humble yet passionate pleading, at the feet of this beggar
and outcast.
“Wait, wait,” she cried. “Oh! hear me. Truly your God was born in a
stable and died upon a cross. He loves you, and he was as poor as you.”
“There be no God,” the man reiterated hoarsely. “It’s easy for the likes
o’ ye to talk, all warm and full and comfortable.”
Jane wrung her hands. “I cannot explain,” she said, “I cannot understand.
But it must be that God knows best. He sent me. Come home with me, and I
will give you food and clothes and money.”
“Not I,” cried the man defiantly. “I knows that trick too well, miss.
Food and clothes belike, but a jail too. I’ll trust none. Pay me here.”
Jane turned her pocket out. “I have nothing with me,” she said. “Will you
not trust me?” But in his hard-set face she read her answer while she
spoke.
“Very well,” she continued. “Take a note from me to my steward. He will
pay you.”
“Let’s see’t,” was the brief reply. Hastily she wrote a few words in
pencil, and he read them aloud.
“Now, miss,” he said, “it’s not safe for me to be about town much ’fore
dark, and, what’s more, I won’t trust ye there neither. Here ye’ll bide
the night through, if ye means what ye says.”
“O Tom!” the woman exclaimed, breaking silence for the first time since
Jane spoke, “’twull be a fearful night for the like o’ she.”
“Let her feel it, then,” he retorted. “Wasn’t her Lord she talks on born
in the cold and the gloom to-night, ’cording to you and she, lass? Let
her try’t, say I, and see what she’ll believe come morn.”
Like a flash it passed through Jane’s mind that her last midnight Mass
among her own people was taken from her; that, knowing her uncertain
ways, no one would think of seeking her till it was too late, any more
than her steward, well used to her impulses, would dream of questioning
a note of hers, no matter who brought it. Yet with the keen pang of
disappointment a thrill of sweetness mingled. Was not her Lord indeed
born in the cold and the gloom that night? “I am quite willing to wait,”
she said quietly.
The man went to the door. “Tide’s nigh full,” he said, “and night’s nigh
here. I’ll go my ways. But mark ye, miss, I’ll be waiting t’other side,
to see ye don’t follow. Trust me to wait patient, till it’s too dark for
ye to come.”
Jane watched him till he had reached the further line of the cliff; then
she buried her face in her hands. Space and time seemed as nothing;
again, as for years she had been used to do, she strove to place herself
in the stable at Bethlehem, and the child-longing rose within her to
clasp the Holy Infant in her arms, and warm him at her heart, and clothe
him like a prince. And then she remembered what the man had said: “It’s
easy for the likes o’ ye to talk, all warm and full and comfortable.”
There are natures still among us that cannot be content unless they
lavish the whole box of ointment on the Master’s feet. Jane turned to the
heap of sea-weed where the half-frozen woman lay. “Can you rise for a
minute?” she asked gently. “I am going to change clothes with you. Yes, I
am strong, and can walk about and bear it all; but you will freeze if you
lie here.” And putting down the woman’s feeble resistance with a bright,
sweet will, Jane had her way.
Half exhausted, her companion sank back upon her poor couch, and soon
fell asleep; and when the baby woke, Jane took it from her, lest its
pitiful wailing should rouse the mother, to whom had come blessed
forgetfulness of her utter inability to feed or soothe it. She wrapped
the child in her rags, and walked the room with it for hours that night.
It seemed to her that they must freeze to death if she stopped. For a
time the wind raged furiously and the rain fell in torrents; no blessed
vision came to dispel the darkness of her vigil; no ecstasy to keep the
cold from biting her; she felt its sting sharply and painfully the whole
night through. The first few hours were the hardest she had ever spent,
yet she would not have exchanged them for the sweetest joy this world had
ever given her. “My Lord was cold,” she kept saying. “My Lord was cold
to-night.”
By and by--it seemed to her that it must be very late--the storm passed
over. She went to the door. The clouds were lifting, and far away the sea
was glimmering faintly in the last rays of a hidden and setting moon.
Below a mass of dark clouds, and just above the softly-lighted sea, shone
out a large white star. Across the water, heaving heavily like one who
has fallen asleep after violent weeping, and still sobs in slumber, came
to her the sound of the clock striking midnight; and then all the chimes
rang sweetly, and she knew that the Mass she had longed for had begun.
“I cannot bear it!” she cried; then felt the child stir on her breast,
and, gathering it closer to her, she said slowly: “God understands. His
way must be best.” And she tried to join in spirit with those in church
who greeted the coming of the Lord.
Surely there was some reason for her great disappointment and for her
suffering that night. Reason? Was it not enough to be permitted thus to
share His first night of deprivation? And presently she began to plan for
herself God’s plan--how the man would return, and find her there wet and
cold and hungry, and would learn why she had done it, and would never
doubt God again. She fancied them all at home with her, employed by her,
brought back to a happy, holy life; and she prayed long and earnestly for
each.
He did come, as soon as the gray morning twilight broke--came with haste,
bade his wife rise, and take her child and follow him. He gave no time
for the words Jane wished to speak; but when the woman said that she must
return the garments which had kept her warm, and perhaps alive, that
night, Jane cried “No, no! It is as if I had kept our Lady warm for once,
and carried her Child, not yours.” And she clasped the baby passionately,
kissing it again and again.
The man stood doubtful, then tore the rich cloak from his wife’s
shoulders, seized the mean one which it had replaced, wrapped her in it,
hiding thus the costly attire, that might have caused suspicion, then
looked about the room.
“The crucifix?” he said.
“Is it not mine?” Jane asked.
He pointed to the woman. “It’s her bit o’ comfort,” he said. “Gie it to
her, miss. Plenty ye’s got, I wot. I’ll ne’er harm ’un again.”
There was no more farewell than that; no more promise of better things.
In a few minutes they had disappeared among the pines; and cold,
suffering, disheartened, Jane made her way homeward. To her truest home
first; for bells were ringing for first Mass, and Jane stole into church,
and, clad in beggar’s rags beneath her velvet cloak, knelt in real
humility to receive her Lord. “I do not understand,” she said to him,
sobbing softly. “Nothing that I do succeeds as I like. But, my Jesus, I
am sure thy will is best, only I wanted so much to help them for thee.
Why was it, my Jesus?”
But the years went by, and though Christmas after Christmas Jane
remembered with a pang that great disappointment, her longings and her
questions remained unanswered.
And so it was in almost everything. Her life after that strange Christmas
Eve was one of constant, heroic, personal service for others, in the love
of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The brilliant woman was never seen again at
ball or hunt, but beside the beds of the sick and suffering she was daily
to be found, making the most painful, repulsive cases her special care.
And she, who had delighted in daintiest apparel, never wore again after
that Christmas morning jewels or costly clothing. “I have tasted once the
sweetness of faring like my Lord,” she said impetuously to her husband.
“Do not break my heart by making me all warm and full and comfortable
again.” And he, whose high soul answered nobly to her own, never tried to
hold her back, but followed her eagerly in her earnest following of her
Lord.
Yet the self-willed nature cost its owner many sufferings before it
learned submission to the divine Master. It pleased God that Jane Everett
should live to an advanced and very strong old age, and it also pleased
him through all those years to conform her will to his by constant and
peculiar trials. The husband whom she loved with an almost idolatrous
love was taken from her, without an instant’s warning, by a fearful
accident. Her sons, whom she dedicated to God’s holy priesthood, died in
their cradles; her daughters grew into the fairest bloom of womanhood,
only to become the brides of death. Yet nothing quenched the fire in her
eye, and the cry of her heart for years was still its old cry: “O God! I
cannot bear it. Yes, I can. God’s will is best. But I cannot understand.”
One Advent the last remaining friend of her youth sent to her, begging
her to come with haste to pass with her the last Christmas they could
expect to be together on earth; and the brave old woman, though craving
to spend the holy season near her darlings’ graves, went forth to face
the inclement weather with as stout a heart as in her youth she had sped
along Exeter Beach under the threatening sky. In a little village, with
no one near who knew her except her servants, Death laid his hand upon
her who had desired him for many days.
“This is a serious illness,” the physician said to her. Then, reading
rightly the spirit with which he had to deal, he added: “A sickness unto
death, madam.”
“Harness the horses, then,” she said, lifting herself, “and let me get to
Ewemouth and die there.”
“Send for a priest,” the doctor answered her. “You have no time to lose.”
“It has been always so, father,” Jane said, looking up pitifully into
the face of the priest when at last he came. “From the time that I
first earnestly gave myself to God, up to this time, he has thwarted me
in every way. Sixty years ago this very Christmas Eve he did it. It all
comes back to me as hard to bear as then; and all my life has been like
that.” And slowly and with pauses Jane told the story of her night at
Lonely Cove.
“It has always been so, father. Whenever I have loved any one or tried to
help any one, I have failed or they have left me.”
“My daughter,” the priest replied, “God’s work in a life like yours is
far more the subjection of the will than the number of holy actions for
others. Be sure that what we think failure is often success in God’s
eyes and through his power. He asks one last sacrifice from you. Madam,
God has brought you here to add the crowning blessing to your life--the
opportunity of a last and entire surrender of your will to his most
blessed will. Will you offer to him your whole life, that to you seems so
incomplete and marred, judged by your own plans and wishes, saying to him
without reserve that you believe, certainly, that his way is far better
than yours?”
He held the crucifix before her, and suddenly the long years seemed
to vanish like a dream, and she felt once more the biting cold in the
haunted house at Lonely Cove, and again a child nestled upon her heart,
bringing with it the thought of the manger-bed, and the question, _Why_
should so much suffering be? And from that manger her thoughts returned
to the hard couch of the cross; and to all that mystery of suffering came
the mysterious answer, “Not my will, but thine, be done.”
She took and kissed the offered crucifix. “Yes, father,” she said
meekly. “May the most just, most high, and most amiable will of God be
done, praised, and eternally exalted in all things. I had rather die
here, O my God! since it is thy blessed will, than in any other place on
earth.”
“Amen,” said the priest.
But when the last sacraments had been administered, and Jane lay calm and
patient now, waiting her release, the priest drew near to her, and looked
with a great reverence upon her face.
“My daughter,” he said “it is at times the will of God to show us even
here the use of some part at least of what he has let us do for him.
Be sure his Sacred Heart remembers all the rest as well. Sixty years
ago this Christmas Eve my father was saved from a great sin, my mother
and I from death, by a Christian woman’s love for her Lord. The first
confession I ever heard was my own father’s last. He told me that from
the time he saw that rich young girl in rags endure the biting cold for
God, faith lived in his heart, and _would not die_. I saw him pass away
from earth in penitence and hope. For more than thirty years I have
labored among God’s poor as your thank-offering. Madam, my mother by the
love of God, God sends you this token that he has worked his own work by
means of you all your life long. He sends you this token, because you
have given him the thing he most desired of you--your will.”
Jane folded her aged hands humbly. “Not unto us, O Lord!” she said, low
and faint, and then a voice as of a son and priest at once spoke clearly,
seeing her time had come: “Depart, O Christian soul! in peace.”
THE APOSTOLIC MISSION TO CHILI.
_A CHAPTER IN THE LIFE OF PIUS IX._
Before entertaining ourselves with an account of the voyage and journeys,
from Genoa to Buenos Ayres and across the continent to Valparaiso,
of the first pope who has ever been to America, we shall enter into
a few details to show the occasion of the apostolic mission which he
accompanied in an official capacity.
The great reverses of Spain at the beginning of the present century, and
the consequent weakening of the bonds that united her American colonies
to their mother-country, besides some other causes silently working
since the emancipation of the thirteen British provinces from England,
finally led to a Declaration of Independence, which was established after
several years of war. But the king to whose government these New-World
possessions had been subject for nearly three hundred years refused to
recognize the accomplished fact or to enter into diplomatic relations
with rebels against his authority.[213]
The Congress of Verona, in 1822, took some notice of these revolted
countries; but the European powers did not all agree to receive them
into the family of nations by a formal recognition, and it is well
known that the views expressed in that assembly gave rise on the part
of the President of the United States to a declaration of policy which
has been called the Monroe Doctrine.[214] The Holy See, having sublimer
interests to deal with, could not act as indifferently in this matter as
other governments, which looked only to temporal advantage, and wrangled
over old systems of public policy regardless of recent events. By the
quixotic obstinacy of Spain the South American republics suffered much
inconvenience, particularly in point of religion, because Rome could not
provide for their spiritual wants without risking an open rupture with
his Catholic Majesty--such were royal pretensions of restricting the
exercise of papal rights, even in merely nominal dominions.[215]
During the latter part of Pius VII.’s pontificate the government of
Chili sent one of its distinguished citizens, the Archdeacon Don
José Cienfuegos, envoy to Rome, with instructions to try to establish
direct ecclesiastical relations between the Holy See and Santiago, the
capital of his country. He arrived there on August 22, 1822, and was
well received, but only in his spiritual capacity. The pope would not
recognize him as a political agent. On the 7th of September following
the Holy Father addressed a brief to the Bishop of Merida de Maracaybo,
in which he expressed himself solicitous for the spiritual necessities
of his children in those far-distant parts of America, and intimated
his ardent desire to relieve them. A little later he formed a special
congregation of six cardinals, presided over by Della Genga, who became
his successor as Leo XII.; and after mature deliberation on the religious
affairs in the ex-viceroyalties of Spain, it was determined to send a
mission to Chili, that country being chosen for the honor as having made
the first advances. This measure so displeased the Spanish government
that the nuncio Monsignor--afterwards Cardinal--Giustiniani was
dismissed; and although he was soon after permitted to return, the wound
inflicted upon him left its sting behind, for, coming very near to the
number of votes requisite to election in the conclave after Pius VIII.’s
death, the court of Madrid barred his fortune by the exercise of that
odious privilege called the _Esclusiva_; the ground of his exclusion from
the Papacy being supposed at Rome to have been his participation in the
appointment of bishops to South America. The right (?) of veto expires
with its exercise once in each conclave; and Cardinal Cappellari (Gregory
XVI.), who, as we shall see, had the most to do with these episcopal
nominations, was elected pope.
The choice of a vicar-apostolic for the Chilian mission fell upon Prof.
Ostini (later nuncio to Brazil and a cardinal), who, after having
accepted the position, saw fit suddenly to decline it for reasons best
known to himself. In his stead Don Giovanni Muzi, then attached to the
nunciature at Vienna, was selected, and, having been recalled to Rome,
was consecrated Archbishop of Philippi in _partibus infidelium_,[216]
with orders to proceed immediately to Santiago. The mission, of which we
shall speak more particularly hereafter, embarked on October 4, 1823, and
reached Rome on its return the 7th of July, 1825.
Leo XII. succeeded Pius VII. In 1824 the republic of Colombia sent Don
Ignacio Texada to Rome with an application for bishops and apostolic
vicars in that immense region; but the Spanish ambassador, Chevalier
Vargas, a haughty diplomate, brimful of _Españolismo_, went to the pope
and demanded his dismissal. This was refused. The envoy had come for
spiritual interests, not on political grounds; and the Spaniard could
not convince Leo that the rebel’s argument--by which he asked no more
than that species of indirect recognition granted by the Holy See,
under Innocent X. and Alexander VII., to the house of Braganza when it
forced Portugal from under Spanish rule--was not a good one and founded
on precedent. Nevertheless, Texada returned to Bologna, and finally
withdrew altogether from the Papal States. He had some fine qualities,
but lacked discretion in speech, which was a fault very injurious
to his position. Harpocrates is still the great god of diplomacy the
world over. This state of things was embarrassing. Spain had refused
to recognize the independence of her many provinces in the New World,
although she had ceased practically even to disturb them. The king, who
was somewhat of a _Marquis de Carabas_, claimed all his old rights over
them, and, among them, that of episcopal presentation. Cardinal Wiseman,
who was an attentive observer of these times, remarks--very properly, we
think--that even if such a power could be still called legal, “it would
have been quite unreasonable to expect that the free republics would
acknowledge the jurisdiction of the country which declared itself at
war with them.” This was a clear case in which allegiance should follow
protection. After a prudent delay, Leo thought it his duty to represent
energetically to the Spanish government the inconvenience he suffered
from the existing state of affairs, and the impossibility of his viewing
with indifference a condition in which the faithful, long deprived of
pastors, were urgently asking for bishops for the vacant sees. Yet His
Holiness had taken no decisive step, but called upon his majesty either
to reduce his transatlantic subjects to obedience or to leave him free
to provide as best he could for the necessities of the church. In the
consistory of May 21, 1827, the pope, after protesting that he could not
any longer in conscience delay his duty to Spanish America, proceeded to
nominate bishops for more than six dioceses in those parts. Madrid was,
of course, displeased, although it was twelve years since the government
had lost even the shadow of authority there, and at first refused
to receive the new nuncio, Tiberi.[217] At this juncture Pedro Gomez
de Labrador was sent from Spain expressly to defeat the measure; but
although “acknowledged by all parties, and especially by the diplomatic
body in Rome, to be one of the most able and accomplished statesmen in
Europe, yet he could not carry his point” against the quiet and monk-like
Cardinal Cappellari, who was deputed by the pope to meet him. In the
allocution pronounced by Labbrador before the Sacred College, assembled
in conclave to elect a successor to Leo, he made an allusion to the
ever-recurring subject of the revolted Americans; but although done with
tact, it grated on the ears of many as too persistently and, under the
circumstances, unreasonably put forward.
The discussion between the courts of Rome and Madrid was not renewed
during the brief pontificate of Pius VIII.; but in the encyclical letter
announcing his election there is a delicate reference to the affair
which, although not expressly named, will be perceived by those who
are acquainted with the questions of that day. Comte de Maistre says
somewhere that if a parish be left without a priest for thirty years,
the people will worship--the pigs; and although the absence of a bishop
from his diocese for such a length of time might not induce a similar
result, yet the faithful would drop, perhaps, into a Presbyterian form of
church government and be lost. The veteran statesman Cardinal Consalvi
evidently thought so, as we see by the fourth point, which treats of
Spanish America, in the conference that he was invited to hold with
Leo XII. on the most important interests of the Holy See.[218] When,
therefore, Gregory XVI.--who, as Cardinal Cappellari; had not been a
stranger to the long dispute--became pope, he ended the matter promptly
and for ever. In his first consistory, held in February, 1831, he filled
a number of vacant sees and erected new ones where required in South
America. On the 31st of August following he published the apostolic
constitution “Solicitudo Ecclesiarum,” in which he explained the reasons
why the Holy See, in order to be able to govern the universal church,
whose interests are paramount to all local disputes, recognizes _de
facto_ governments, without intending by this to confer a new right,
detract from any legitimate claim, or decide upon _de jure_ questions.
The republics of New Granada[219] (1835), Ecuador (1838), and Chili
(1840) were subsequently recognized with all the solemnities of
international law.
In the last-named country there were two episcopal sees during the
Spanish dominion. These were Santiago and Concepcion, both subject to
the Metropolitan of Lima; but Gregory rearranged the Chilian episcopate,
making the first see an archbishopric, with Concepcion, La Serena, and
San Carlos de Ancud (in the island of Chiloe) for suffragan sees.
At the time that the apostolic mission to South America was determined
upon, there was living in Rome a young ecclesiastic as yet “to fortune
and to fame unknown,” but who was destined to become the first pope who
has ever been across the Atlantic, and the foremost man of the XIXth
century. This was Don Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti, one of the fourteen
canons of the collegiate church of Santa Maria _in Via Lata_. He was
selected by Pius VII. to accompany Mgr. Muzi as adjunct. The secretary
of the apostolic delegation was a priest named Giuseppe Sallusti, who
wrote a full narrative of the expedition, in which, as Cardinal Wiseman
says, “The minutest details are related with the good-humored garrulity
of a new traveller, who to habits of business and practical acquaintance
with graver matters unites, as is common in the South, a dash of
comic humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous, and withal a charming
simplicity and freshness of mind, which render the book amusing as well
as instructive, in spite of its heavy quotations from that lightest of
poets, Metastasio.”[220] It is in 4 vols. 8vo, with a map. Comparatively
only a small portion of the work is taken up with the actual voyages and
travels of the party, the rest being devoted to the preliminaries or
causes of the mission, to a description of Chili, and an account of the
many missionary establishments which had once flourished, as well as of
those that were still maintained, there. A fifth volume was promised by
the author to contain the documents, official acts, and results of the
mission; but we believe that it was never published. The vicar-apostolic
having received, at the earnest solicitation of a learned ecclesiastic
from the Argentine Confederation, Rev. Dr. Pacheco, very ample faculties
not only for the country to which he was more immediately accredited,
but also for Buenos Ayres, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, and all other parts
of the ex-Spanish dominions, and accompanied by the envoy Cienfuegos and
Father Raymond Arce, a young Dominican belonging to Santiago, the party
left Rome for Bologna, where it rested awhile to get a foretaste of the
magnificent scenes in the New World from Father T. de Molina, who had
long resided in Chili. The next stage in the journey was to Genoa, the
port of embarkation, which was reached only on the 17th of July; but, “by
a series of almost ludicrous delays,” the expedition was detained until
after the death of Pius VII. and the election of his successor, Leo XII.,
who confirmed the mission and addressed a brief to the president[221] of
the Chilian Republic, recommending its objects and the welfare of its
members.
All matters being now satisfactorily arranged, the party got on board the
fine French-built brig _Eloysa_ on the 11th of October, 1823. The vessel
sailed under Sardinian colors, and was manned by a crew of thirty-four
men, and officered by experienced sailors, the captain, Anthony Copello,
having several times navigated the South Atlantic. The weather was very
rough, as usual, in the Gulf of Lyons; “and gurly grew the sea,” to the
dismay and discomfiture of the terrified landsmen, “Mastai,” as Sallusti
familiarly calls his companion, suffering horribly from sickness. This
was but the beginning of many trials, and even some serious dangers,
amidst which we can well imagine that the captain would have been glad
beyond measure if any one had hinted at the very special Providence that
guarded his ship, by quoting the famous words, “_Quid times? Cæsarem
vehis et fortunam ejus!_” Soon the _Eloysa_ approached the coast of
Catalonia, down which she sailed at the rate of ten knots an hour, until
struck by a furious southwest hurricane, the _libeccio_ so much dreaded
in the Mediterranean, which threatened destruction to all and everything
in its course. To a landsman like Sallusti the storms encountered on
this voyage would naturally appear worse than they really were, and his
frequent account of “waves mountain-high” and “imminent shipwreck” would
perhaps sound like “yarns” to an old tar. He delights in describing the
_Eloysa_ as
“Uplifted on the surge, to heaven she flies,
Her shattered top half buried in the skies”
--(_Falconer_),
and everywhere shows himself, like a good inland _abbate_, dreadfully
afraid of salt water. Capt. Copello would fain have put into Valencia for
shelter; but it was feared that the Spanish authorities might detain his
ship, or at least disembark the passengers, and it was determined rather
to brave the elements than to trust themselves within gunshot of a
Spanish harbor. These bold resolutions, however, did not appease the fury
of the wind, and it finally came to deciding between a watery grave and a
stony prison; the decision was quickly taken, and Palma, in the island of
Majorca, was fetched in safety. The mission party was very inhospitably
treated here; and Mgr. Muzi and Canon Mastai were ordered to come on
shore at once and give an account of themselves. As soon as they had put
foot on land, the two distinguished ecclesiastics were thrust into a cold
and filthy Lazaretto, on plea of sanitary regulations, but really out of
spite for their character and destination. Their papers were seized, and
measures instantly taken to bring them to trial; and there was even talk
of sending them to an African fortress where political prisoners were
confined. When Sallusti heard of this Balearic treatment, he summoned all
his Italian courage, and, going on shore, declared to the cocked-hatted
officials that he would share the fate of his companions; but instead
of admiring this prodigality of a great soul (Hor. _Od._ i. 12, 38),
those unclassical islanders simply swore round oaths and turned him in
with the rest. This was fortunate in one sense; for we would otherwise
have missed a good description of the examination of the three Italians
before the magistrates, who behaved rudely; the alcade, in his quality
of judge, putting on more airs than a Roman proconsul.[222] Further
outrages were threatened, but the intervention of the _Sardinian consul_
and of the Bishop of Palma finally convinced those proud men of the
exclusively religious mission of their victims. In view of subsequent
events in Italy, it seems strange that the future pope should have been
saved from further indignities, and perhaps from a dungeon, by an agent
of the Piedmontese government; yet so it was. The Italians were permitted
to return to the ship, but a demand was made to deliver up the two
Chilians as rebellious Spanish subjects. This was promptly refused; but
notwithstanding a great deal of blustering and many threats, the case
was allowed to drop, and the _Eloysa_ sailed away after several days’
detention. Gibraltar was passed on the 28th of October, and a severe
storm having tossed the brig about unmercifully on her entry into the
Atlantic, the peak of Teneriffe loomed up on November 4.
After leaving the Canary Islands, the _Eloysa_ was hailed one dark
night by a shot across her bows, which came from a Colombian privateer,
and quickly brought her to. She was quickly boarded, and a gruff voice
demanded her papers and to have the crew and passengers mustered on
deck. Sallusti was in mortal dread, and, to judge from his description
of the scene, he must have been quaking with fear; but Don Giovanni
Mastai behaved with that calmness and dignity which even then began to
be remarked in him, in whatever circumstances he found himself. After
some delay, the brig was allowed to proceed; nothing being taken off but
a bottle of good Malaga wine--which, however, was rather _accepted_ than
stolen by the rover of the seas.
After a time the Cape Verd Islands appeared in all their richness; and
on the 27th of the month the line was crossed amidst the usual riot of
sailors, and with the payment of a generous ransom by the clergy. On
December 8 the _Eloysa_ lay becalmed alongside of a slaver crowded with
poor Africans on their way to Brazil. Sallusti complains about this time
of bad water and short rations, and mentions with particular disgust that
the fare generally consisted of potatoes and lean chickens. On the 22d a
man fell overboard in a dreadful gale, and was rescued with difficulty.
Christmas was celebrated as well as circumstances permitted; and a neat
little oratory having been fitted up in the main cabin, midnight Mass
was said by the archbishop, the second Mass by Canon Mastai, and the
third by Friar Arce. On the 27th of December, S. John’s Day, and the
patronal feast of the canon, the welcome cry of “Land ho!” was heard
from the look-out at the mast-head about three P.M., and the crew and
passengers united upon deck to return fervent thanks to Almighty God.
The land sighted was a small desert island, a little north of Cape Santa
Maria, off the coast of Uruguay. A fearful storm was encountered the next
evening at the mouth of the La Plata. This was one of those southwestern
gales, called _Pamperos_, which frequently blow with inconceivable fury,
causing singular fluctuations in the depth of the wide mouth of the
river. It raged so that the captain was obliged to cut his cable and
abandon the shelter of Flores Island, which he had sought when it began,
and to take to the open sea again. With better weather he returned and
dropped anchor opposite Montevideo on the evening of January 1, 1824.
Sallusti goes into raptures over the beautiful aspect of the city, as
seen from the bay; its broad and regular streets, its stately houses
built on a gentle elevation, its fine cathedral, the strains of music
borne over the water--everything enchanted the travellers, weary of a
three months’ voyage.
“The sails were furl’d; with many a melting close
Solemn and slow the evening anthem rose--
Rose to the Virgin. ’Twas the hour of day
When setting suns o’er summer[223] seas display
A path of glory, opening in the west
To golden climes and islands of the blest;
And human voices on the balmy air
Went o’er the waves in songs of gladness there!”
--(_Rogers._)
As soon as the news got abroad of a delegation from the pope, the
whole city was in a joyful commotion, and a deputation, consisting of
the cathedral chapter, four other secular priests, and two Dominican
fathers, came to the ship to pay their respects to Mgr. Muzi, who was
also invited on shore and pressed with every offer of assistance by the
most honorable representatives of the laity. These kind attentions could
not induce the party to land; and as soon as damages were repaired and
a pilot received, sail was made for Buenos Ayres, which was sighted at
two P.M. of January 5; but just while the passengers were all on deck
watching the approaches to the city, they were assailed and driven below
by myriads of mosquitoes. Sallusti is very vehement against these sharp
little insects, and bewails the lot of those who must live among them;
but he carefully avoids a comparison with the _fleas_ of his native
Italy. Although the passengers remained on board that night, crowds of
people lined the shore, and, after salutes of artillery, greeted them
with cries of “Long live the vicar apostolic!” “Cheers for America!”
“Success to Chili!” On the following day the captain of the port and his
suite came off to the brig, bringing a courteous note from the governor,
offering a public reception (for which preparations had already been
made) and the hospitalities of the city to the members of the mission.
This was declined, for reasons that are not very clear; but although the
archbishop gave his bad health as the principal excuse, we suspect that
Cienfuegos impressed upon the Italians that, the mission being directed
to _his_ country, it were uncourtly to parade it before reaching its
destination. By their minds such a view would be accepted as _assai
diplomatico_. When the party did land, they put up at a hotel called
“The Three Kings,” kept by a jolly Englishman, who treated them right
royally--and made them pay in proportion. During their twelve days’ stay
in Buenos Ayres, the archbishop and his suite received every mark of
reverence from the people; yet the officials maintained a cold reserve
since the refusal to accept their invitation. Even the ecclesiastical
authority--such as it was--put on very bad airs; Zavaletta, a simple
priest, but administrator of the diocese, having the audacity to withdraw
from Mgr. Muzi permission, which had been previously granted to give
confirmation. At the time of the arrival of the apostolic mission the
provinces of the Rio de la Plata, which had formed part of the Spanish
viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres, had been united from 1816 to 1820, but were
now in a state of political isolation, somewhat like that of the States
of the American Union before the federal Constitution was adopted. Soon
after the arrival of the mission, another General Congress was called.
Still, the Italians were not impressed--as it was important that they
should be to obtain proper consideration at Rome,--with the idea of a
strong government holding sway over a vast and wealthy territory. On the
16th of January, at nine o’clock in the forenoon, the party began the
journey across the continent. Three great covered wagons, each drawn
by four horses and guided by twelve postilions, composed the train;
while a courier went ahead to hunt up quarters, and a mounted orderly,
with a very long sword and a fierce-looking beard, brought up the
rear or pranced about the flanks of the line. The drivers kept around
in no particular order, sonorously cracking their whips and uttering
loud sounds which probably were not oaths to the unaccustomed ears of
Sallusti. Besides the three Italians, there was Cienfuegos with four
young Chilians in his company and two servants, so that the whole party
was pretty numerous, and the more so when, a little further on, six
gallant guachos were added as an escort. Only fifteen miles were made
the first day, which brought the party to Moron, where confirmation was
given. At a miserable rancho called Lujan the archbishop said his first
Mass on the pampas at a rich altar improvised for him by the _padre_
of the place, and surmounted by four massive silver candlesticks. The
room was hung round with rich damask hangings. It was like a jewel in a
dung-heap. The Arecife stream was crossed in boats by the travellers, but
forded by the wagons and horsemen. The superb Parana River was reached
at San Pedro; and thence the route lay through a rich and beautiful
country to the important town of Rosario, on the high, precipitous banks
of the great river. At the outskirts of this place the party was met by
the parish priest; and confirmation was administered the next day to an
immense number of the faithful, long deprived of this sacrament. From
Rosario, which they left on the morning of the 23d, the journey was long,
weary, and dangerous, on account of the roving bands of Indians which at
that period scoured the plains in all directions to cut off herdsmen and
small parties of travellers or traders, making a booty of their baggage,
killing the men, and carrying women and children into captivity. At a
little station called Orqueta the party caught sight for the first time
of a wild Indian, who was lurking about the place in a very suspicious
manner, but kept at a respectful distance from the guachos. When Sallusti
saw this man apparently spying out the route and strength of the party,
the marrow nearly froze in his bones; and he certainly had good cause
for alarm. It happened that leaving Buenos Ayres a few days earlier
than had been given out was lucky; for a large band of these mounted
savages, armed with lances and lassos, had got wind of the arrival of
great personages from Europe, carrying (it was reported) an immense
amount of treasure to the Pacific coast, and had formed a plan to attack
them, which was defeated only by mistaking the day of their departure,
whereby their arrival at the lonely and ill-famed post of Desmochados
was miscalculated. Three days after the mission party had passed, the
Indians, to the number of about three hundred, swooped down upon the
place, but, instead of finding the rich foreigners, they surrounded only
a miserable set of twenty peons escorting a lot of goods across the
plains. These were all massacred except one, who, although badly wounded
and left for dead, survived to tell the story and describe the fiendish
disappointment of the savages at not capturing the prey they expected.
At Frayle Muerto Mgr. Muzi received, through the agency of Cienfuegos,
a polite message from the clergy of Cordova;[224] but having sent his
return compliments directly instead of through the channel of original
communication, the Chilian thought himself slighted, and separated from
the mission party, preceding it a good distance, and taking with him,
besides his own attendants, the orderly in brilliant uniform, who, the
Europeans had the mortification of seeing, was meant to distinguish the
_native_, although a subordinate in clerical rank. Such is human nature,
whether at courts or on a dusty plain.
After passing through several small settlements and the more important
town of San Luis--being everywhere well received--the fine old city of
Mendoza was reached on the 15th of February. It seemed as if the entire
population had turned out to honor the distinguished arrivals. Triumphal
arches were erected, troops were drawn up under arms, processions of
citizens and clergy marshalled; from every house richly-colored tapestry
was suspended, while the balconies were filled with ladies, who threw
down flowers in the path of the apostolic vicar as he entered the town
and proceeded to the house of a noble and wealthy lady, Doña Emmanuela
Corbalan, in which everything had been prepared on the grandest scale
of provincial magnificence, and where Cienfuegos, in all his glory
and recovered temper, was waiting to receive him and Canon (Count)
Mastai, who were to be lodged there during their stay; the secretary,
Sallusti, being handed over to a less worshipful host. Religious and
civic festivals, excursions in the environs to the vineyards, gardens,
farms, and silver-mines, with other congenial occupations, detained
the party very agreeably during nine days in this neat and pleasant
town, the climate of which is noted for its salubrity. On the 24th
they left Mendoza, and had a delightful trip on horseback over good
roads and through a civilized country for seventy-five miles to the
foot of the mighty Andes. They were now on the eastern range of the
Cordilleras, at the Paramilla Mountains, which are about ten thousand
feet high and partly covered with wood. Between these and the western
range they traversed, near thirty-two degrees south latitude, a wide
valley, sterile and impregnated with salt, for over forty miles, called
the Uspallata. For fifteen miles the road was level, and the remainder
winding up and down the hills which skirt both ranges. After crossing
this valley, they struck the great range of the Andes, which is between
fifty and sixty miles in width, consisting of four or five parallel
masses of rock, divided from one another by deep and dangerous ravines
and sombre glens. The road which leads over them is called the _Cumbre_
(summit) Pass, and attains an elevation of twelve thousand four hundred
and fifty-four feet above the level of the sea. Our travellers crossed
on mules by this road, getting to the north of them, amidst piles of
perpetual snow, a magnificent view of the grand volcano of Aconcagua,
which is nearly twenty-four thousand feet high. The passage of the
mountains was grand and impressive, but was not made without danger to
the lives of some of the party, particularly on the 29th of February.
From La Cumbre there is a gradual descent to the city of Santiago. On the
1st of March the travellers cast their admiring gaze upon the Pacific
slope, which, from that day until they entered the capital of Chili, on
the 6th of the month--passing through Villa-de-Santa-Rosa and over the
magnificent plains of Chacabuco--was a continually shifting panorama of
natural beauty, enhanced by villages, convents, and churches perched on
the side of verdant hills or nestling in the fruitful valleys. At every
halting-place their hearts were filled with a holy joy to witness the
demonstrations of faith among the people, and of loyalty to their great
spiritual chief on earth, represented by Mgr. Muzi. The party entered
Santiago, as was said, on the 6th, and, going to the cathedral, the
archbishop intoned pontifically the _Te Deum_, with the assistance of a
future pope and of the historian of the apostolic mission. The members of
the legation were lodged in a house near the _Cappucinas_; and although
we know little of the occupations of Canon Mastai in Chili, it is certain
that he made himself personally very agreeable. How could it be otherwise?
“A man of letters, and of manners too:
Of manners sweet as virtue always wears,
When gay good nature dresses her in smiles.”
--(_Cowper._)
We have been told by a distinguished Chilian that Canonico Mastai was
a frequent guest in Santiago at the house of his uncle, Don Francisco
Ruiz Tagle, and used to go out with him quite often to his country-seat.
Although the mission was received with an almost universal outburst of
enthusiasm, and notwithstanding the majority of the clergy and people
was well disposed, it met with considerable opposition from a fierce
and fanatical party of Freemasons, which threw every obstacle in the
way of close relations with Rome. Cardinal Wiseman says, in the article
in the _Dublin Review_ from which we have already quoted, that “there
was jealousy and bad faith on the part of the Chilian government, and
want of tact and bad management, we fear on the part of the head of the
mission.” Unfortunately, the government was in a transition state between
the presidency of O’Higgins and the election of his successor, Freire,
and administered by a _Junta_. Where there were so many voices there was
much confusion. Cienfuegos, however, seems to have done his duty, and
he was rewarded in 1832 by the bishopric of Concepcion, which had been
vacant for fourteen years. He died in 1839. With regard to the causes of
the failure of the mission, we will not conceal what we have heard from
an excellent senator of Chili, although we mention it reservedly--that
one, at least, of the reasons was a suspicion that Muzi intended to put
Italians in the sees vacant or to be erected in Chili.
From Santiago Mgr. Muzi and his party went to Valparaiso, and embarked
for their return voyage on the 30th of October, 1824. The remarks of the
celebrated Spaniard Balmes upon the visit of the future pope to the New
World find their place here: “There is certainly in nature’s grand scenes
an influence which expands and nerves the soul; and when these are
united to the contemplation of different races, varied in civilization
and manners, the mind acquires a largeness of sentiment most favorable to
the development of the understanding and the heart, widening the sphere
of thought and ennobling the affections. On this account it is pleasing,
above all things, to see the youthful missionary, destined to occupy the
chair of S. Peter, traverse the vast ocean; admire the magnificent rivers
and superb chains of mountains in America; travel through those forests
and plains where a rich and fertile soil, left to itself, displays with
ostentatious luxury its inborn treasures by the abundance, variety,
and beauty of its productions, animate and inanimate; run risks among
savages, sleep in wretched hovels or on the open plain, and pass the
night beneath that brilliant canopy which astonishes the traveller in the
southern hemisphere. Providence, which destined the young Mastai-Ferretti
to reign over a people and to govern the universal church, led him by
the hand to visit various nations, and to contemplate the marvels of
nature.”[225]
A remote but very providential consequence of the visit of Pius IX. to
America, during his early career, was the establishment of the South
American College at Rome, called officially in Italian the Pio-Latino
Americano,[226] which educates aspirants to the priesthood from Brazil
and all parts of the American continent where the Spanish language is
spoken. A wealthy, intelligent, and influential Chilian priest, Don
Ignacio Eyzaguirre,[227] who had been vice-president of the House of
Representatives in 1848, and was an author of repute, was charged by
Pius IX. in 1856 to visit the dioceses of South and Central America and
Mexico, to obtain the views of the several bishops upon the necessity of
founding an ecclesiastical seminary at Rome. The project was universally
acceptable, and funds having been provided--the Holy Father giving
liberally from his private purse--a beginning was made in 1858, when a
part of the Theatine Convent of San Andrea _della Valle_ was given up
to the students, who were put under the direction of Jesuit Fathers.
This location was only temporary; and the college was soon transferred
to the large house of the general of the Dominicans, attached to the
convent of Santa Maria _sopra Minerva_, and facing the piazza. However,
it has been moved again, and in 1869 occupied the right wing of the
novitiate at San Andrea on the Quirinal, with fifty-five inmates. As
if this worthy establishment had to figure in its shifting fortune the
unsettled state of so many of the Spanish American countries, it has
again been disturbed; yet to suffer at the hands of Victor Emanuel and
his sacrilegious band is the indication of a good cause, and will prepare
to meet other, although hardly worse, enemies in the New World.
FREE WILL.
I.
The river glideth not at its sweet will:
The fountain sends it forth;
And answering to earth’s finger doth it still
Go east, west, south, or north.
II.
The soul alone hath perfect liberty
To flow its own free way;
And only as it wills to follow thee,
O Lord! it findeth day.
NELLIE’S DREAM ON CHRISTMAS EVE.
They had quarrelled, these two--it matters not about what trifle--till
the hot, bitter words seemed to have formed an impassable barrier and a
silence fell between them that the lowering brow and compressed lip told
would not be easily broken. Both had loving hearts, and treasured each
other above all earthly things. They had real sorrows enough to make
imaginary ones glance off lightly; for the second Christmas had not yet
cast its snows on their mother’s grave. The thought of each was, “Had
_she_ been here, this would not have happened”; but pride was strong, and
the relenting thoughts were hidden behind a cold exterior.
It was the week before Christmas, and Laura, the eldest, was assisting to
trim the village church, and in the Holy Presence the dark thought faded
and tender memories seemed to reassert their olden sway; and on returning
from her occupation she formed the resolution to stop this folly, and
make advances towards assuming the old, happy life.
“Father Black asked after you, Nell,” she said, as she laid aside her
wrappings, and turned cheerily to the fire. “He wants you to play during
the rehearsal of the new Benediction to-morrow; for Prof. C---- will be
away.” But she was met by a stony look and closed lips. “Come, Nell,”
she said half impatiently, “don’t be so dignified; why do you love that
temper of yours so dearly?”
“You said let there be silence between us, and I am content,” was the
rejoinder. “I shall take care not to trouble you in future.”
Pride and love struggled for mastery in the heart of the eldest, and it
was a mingling of both that brought the answer, in tones cold enough to
freeze the tenderness of the words: “There will come a silence between us
one day, Nell, you will be glad to break.” And she passed from the room.
“Let it come,” was the almost insolent reply; but there was a mist in the
flashing black eyes that contradicted the words.
They passed the day apart from each other, and at night, although
kneeling for prayer in the same little oratory, and occupying the same
little white-draped chamber, the chilling silence remained. So passed the
next day, and it was now Christmas Eve. The evergreens were all hung in
the village church; the altar was radiant with flowers and tapers; the
confessionals were thronged; but both sisters kept aloof, and both hearts
were aching over the pride and anger that was strangling even religion in
their souls. Alas! alas! how the angels must have mourned to see days of
such especial grace passing in sin. Christmas gifts had been prepared,
but neither would present them. How different other Christmas Eves had
been!--the gentle mother overseeing every preparation for the next day,
that was always celebrated as a feast of joy. Those busy hands were idle
now, and the white snow was coldly drifting over the mound that loving
hearts would fain have kept in perpetual summer. A mother’s grave! Except
to those who have knelt beside that mound--that seems such a slight
barrier between the aching heart and its treasure, and yet is such a
hopeless, inexorable one--these words have little meaning.
They retired early, and, as Nell knelt for prayer, the hot tears rolled
through her fingers as she thought of other Christmas mornings, when they
had been awakened for early Mass by the “Merry Christmas! girls,” that
earth would never, never hear again. But the icy bands of pride that had
frozen around her heart would not melt, and sleep came again in that
stony stillness.
Morning came to Nellie’s perturbed visions, and in the gray dawn “Merry
Christmas” broke forth from her lips; but the memory of the past few
days checked the words, and they died in whispers. But as she glanced at
Laura, she saw that her eyes were open, but that their expression was
fixed and rigid. She sprang up with a vague alarm, and laid her hand upon
the low, broad forehead. It was icy cold. Shriek after shriek rang from
her lips, but they reached not the death-dulled ear.
“I never meant it, Laura--I never meant it! Only come back that I may
speak one word!” she moaned. “O my God! give her back to me for one hour,
and I will submit to thy will.” But her voice only broke the silence,
and the white, smiling lips on the bed seemed a mockery of the passionate
anguish wailing above them. She threw herself before the little altar in
her room. “Blessed Mother!” she prayed, “I promise, solemnly promise,
that never, never again will I give way to the passionate temper that has
been my bane, if she may only come back for one hour to grant forgiveness
for the awful words I have spoken.” And for the first time since she had
realized her sorrow tears fell from her eyes.
“Why, Nellie, Nellie, what ails you?” said a familiar voice. “You are
crying in your sleep on this merry Christmas morning; _do_ waken.” And,
oh! the heaven that met those unclosing eyes--Laura bending over her,
smiling, yet with a look of doubt in her face as if the icy barrier had
not yet broken down.
“O my darling, my darling!” sobbed the excited girl, winding her arms
around her sister. “Thank God it is only a dream; but never, never again
will I give way to my awful temper. I have promised it, Laura, and I will
keep my vow.”
And she did. For though she lived long enough for the dark hair to lie
like snowy floss under the matron’s cap, never did those lips utter
stinging sarcasm or close in sullen anger. And often, when her gentle
voice seemed unable to stem some furious tide of passion among her
grandchildren, would she tell the story of her dream on Christmas Eve.
ALLEGRI’S MISERERE.
AT the base of a cliff flowed a tiny rivulet; the rock caught the
rain-drops in his broad hand, and poured them down in little streams to
meet their brothers at his feet, while the brook murmured a constant song
of welcome. But a stone broke from the cliff, and, falling across the
rivulet, threatened to cut its tender thread of life.
“My little strength is useless,” moaned the streamlet. “Vainly I struggle
to move onward; and below the pebbles are waiting for their cool bath,
the budding flowers are longing for my moisture, the little fish are
panting for their breath. A thousand lives depend on mine. Who will aid
me? Who will pity me?”
“Wait until Allegri passes; he will pity you,” said the breeze. “Once the
cruel malaria seized me, and bound messages of death upon me. ‘Pity!’ I
cried. ‘Free me from this burden, from which I cannot flee.’ ‘Hear the
wind moan,’ said some; but no one listened to my prayer till I met a
dreamy musician with God’s own tenderness in his deep eyes. ‘Have mercy!’
I sobbed; and the gentle master plucked branches of roses, and cast them
to me. I was covered with roses, pierced with roses, filled with roses;
their redness entered my veins, and their fragrance filled my breath;
roses fell upon my forehead with the sweetness of a benediction. The
death I bore fled from me; for nothing evil can exist in the presence of
heaven’s fragrance. Cry to the good Allegri, little brooklet; he will
pity you.”
So the rivulet waited till the master came, then sighed for mercy. The
rock was lifted, and the stream flowed forward with a cry of joy to share
its happiness with pebble and flower and fish.
A little bird had become entangled in the meshes of a net. “Trust to the
good Allegri,” whispered the breeze; “it is he who gave me liberty.”
“Trust to the good Allegri,” rippled the brook; “it is he who gave me
liberty.” So the bird waited till the master passed, then begged a share
of his universal mercy. The meshes were parted, and the bird flew to the
morning sky to tell its joy to the fading stars and rising sun.
“Oh! yes, we all know Allegri,” twinkled the stars. “Many a night we have
seen him at the bed of sickness.”
“Many a day I have seen him in the prison,” shouted the sun with the
splendor of a Gloria. “Wherever are those that doubt, that mourn, that
suffer; wherever are those that cry for help and mercy--there have I
found Allegri.”
The people of the earth wondered what made the sun so glorious, not
knowing that he borrowed light from the utterance of a good man’s name.
A multitude of Rome’s children had gathered in S. Peter’s. The Pope was
kneeling in the sanctuary; princes and merchants were kneeling together
under the vast cupola, the poor were kneeling at the threshold; even a
leper dared to kneel on the steps without, and was allowed the presence
of his Lord. All souls were filled with longing, all hearts were striving
for expression.
Then strains of music arose: O soul! cease your longing; O heart! cease
your strife; now utterance is found.
Sadder grew the tones, till, like the dashing of waves, came the sigh:
“Vainly I struggle to move onward. Have mercy, Father!” The lights
flickered and died, a shadow passed over the worshippers, and the Tiber
without stopped in its course to listen.
Sadder grew the tones, till the moan was heard: “Vainly I strive to
escape these meshes. Have mercy, Father!” The shadow grew deeper, and a
little bird without stopped in its flight to listen.
Still was the music sadder with the weight of the sob: “Vainly I flee
from this loathsome burden. Have mercy, Father!” Vaster and darker grew
the shadow, and the very breeze stopped in its course to listen.
And now the music mingled sigh and moan and sob in one vast despairing
cry: “Vainly I struggle against this rock of doubt. Have mercy, Father!
Vainly I strive to escape these meshes of sin. Have mercy, Father! Vainly
I flee from this evil self. Have mercy, O Father! have mercy.” Darker
and deeper and vaster grew the shadow, and all sin in those human hearts
stopped in its triumph to listen.
All light was dead, all sound was dead. Was all hope dead? “No!” wept
a thousand eyes. “No!” sobbed a thousand voices; for now high above
the altar shone forth the promise of light in darkness, of help in
tribulation--in sight of Pope and prince, in sight of rich and poor, and
even in sight of the leper kneeling without, gleamed the starry figure of
the cross.
“How was this Mass of Allegri so completely formed,” cry the three
centuries that have passed since then, “that we have been able to add
nothing to its perfection?”
The calm voice of nature answers: It is because his own love and mercy
were universal; because he had learned that all creation needs the
protecting watchfulness of the Maker; because he gave even the weakest
creatures voice in his all embracing cry of Miserere.
TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY.
I.
“That city knoweth nor sign nor trace
Of mutable land or sea;
Thou who art changeless, grant me a place
In that far city with Thee.”
So spake she, gazing on the distant sea,
That lay, one sheet of gold, in morning light;
And then she cried, “God, make my blindness sight!”
Heart-sore, heart-hungry, sick at heart, was she,
And did mistrust no other hope could be,
This side the grave, than shifting sea and land;
Yet dreamed she not her house was built on sand,
But fearless thought of dread eternity.
And men admired the house she builded fair,
Until a tempest, risen with sudden shock,
Rent it. Then God made answer to her prayer:
Showed her _on earth_ a city, calm, and old,
And strong, and changeless; set her on a rock;
Gave her, with him, a place in his true fold.
II.
“For, oh! the Master is so fair,
His smile so sweet to banished men,
That they who meet it unaware
Can never rest on earth again.”
Such were the words that charmed my ear and heart,
In days when still I dwelt outside the fold;
But now they seem to me too slight and cold,
For I have been with thee, dear Lord, apart,
And seen love’s barbed and o’ermastering dart
Pierce thee beneath the olives dark and old,
Until thy anguish could not be controlled,
But from thy veins the Blood of life did start.
O Word made flesh, made sin, for sinful man!
I seek not now thy smile, so fair, so sweet;
Another vision, haggard, pale, and wan,
Of one who bore earth’s sin and shame and smart,
Hath drawn me, weeping, to thy sacred feet,
To share the unrest of thy bleeding Heart.
THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1875.
The year 1875 has not been a specially remarkable one as distinct from
the years immediately preceding it. Great questions, which affect
humanity at large beyond the line of nationality, and which were rife
three or four years ago, are undecided still. No wars, or revolutions,
or discoveries, or mighty changes have occurred during the year to
alter sensibly the current of human affairs. What the world at large
quarrelled and wrangled over a year, two years, three, four years ago,
it wrangles over still, and may for years yet to come. Much as science
and culture have done to break down the barriers that separate men and
bring the human family nearer together, nations, nationally considered,
stand as far apart as ever they did, and the imaginary line that divides
neighboring peoples finds them wide apart as the antipodes.
To begin a rapid and necessarily incomplete review at home, the past
year can scarcely be regarded as either a happy or successful one,
commercially speaking, in the United States. Preliminary echoes of the
Centennial year of the great republic have been heard, but amid them the
crash of falling banks that had no legitimate excuse for falling, and
of business firms that followed in due order. This, however, is only a
repetition of the two preceding years, which it is as painful as it would
be useless to dwell upon here. In a word, business at large--instead of
recovering, as it was hoped it would, during the past year--if anything,
fell behind, and so continues. The election did not tend to enliven it.
There are hopes, however, of a real revival during the coming Centennial
year, or at least of a beginning on the road of improvement. There is the
more reason to hope for this that large branches of our industries, such
as cereals, iron, and cotton goods, are beginning to find a good foreign
market.
Looked at largely, there are some things on which Americans may
congratulate themselves during the year. Chief among these are their
very misfortunes. Extravagance in living, foolish and vulgar display
in dress and equipage, have disappeared to a satisfactory extent. Of
course where wealth abounds and fortunes are rolled up easily, there
will be shoddy; but then let it be marked off, and the world will not
be the loser. Again, there was a good sign on the part of the people to
form opinions of their own regarding the questions up before them and
the respective merits and qualifications of the various candidates for
election. To be sure, many, too many, persons were elected who were a
disgrace to their constituencies; and while such men are set in high
and responsible positions it is vain to look for reform in the thousand
abuses that afflict the conduct of public affairs. Still, there was a
hopeful indication of the right feeling among the people.
Perhaps the most memorable, certainly the most significant, event to
Catholics in the history of this country took place during the year.
The venerable Archbishop of New York was raised by the Holy Father to
the dignity of the cardinalate, and thereby set in the senate of the
church of which Christ is the invisible, and the Pope, the successor of
Peter, the visible, head. To speak of the fitness of the Holy Father’s
choice in selecting Archbishop McCloskey for this high office and
proud privilege of being the first American cardinal is not for us. It
is sufficient to say that not Catholics alone, but their Protestant
fellow-countrymen also, all the land over, received the news and hailed
the choice with acclaim. But what moves us most is the significance of
the act. In the appointment of an American cardinal in the United States
the wish expressed by the Council of Trent has in this instance been
realized. That great council ordained, respecting the subjects of the
cardinalate, that “the Most Holy Roman Pontiff shall, as far as it can be
conveniently done, select (them) out of all the nations of Christendom,
as he shall find persons suitable” (Sess. 24, _De Ref._, c. i.) Were this
recommendation completely carried out, it would probably be one of the
greatest movements that have taken place in the Catholic Church for the
last three centuries.
Suppose, for example, that the great Catholic interests throughout the
world were represented in that body by men of intelligence, of known
virtue, and large experience; suppose every nationality had there its
proportionate expression--a senate thus composed would be the most august
assembly that ever was brought together upon earth. It would be the only
world’s senate that the world has ever witnessed. This would be giving
its proper expression to the note of the universality of the church.
The decisions of the Holy Father on the world-interests of the church,
assisted by the deliberations of such a body, would have more power to
sway the opinions and actions of the world than armies of bayonets. For,
whatever may be said to the contrary in favor of needle-guns and rifled
cannon, the force of public opinion through such agents as electricity
and types moves the world, above all when supported by the intelligence,
virtue, and experience of men who have no other interests at heart than
those of God and the good of mankind.
Who knows but the time has come to give this universality of the church
a fuller expression? Is not divine Providence acting through modern
discoveries, rendering it possible for the human race to be not only one
family in blood, but even in friendship and unity of purpose? Perhaps the
present persecutions of the church in Italy are only relieving her from
past geographical and national limitations, to place her more completely
in relations with the faithful throughout the world. Who knows but the
time is near when the Holy Father will be surrounded by representatives
of all nations, tribes, and peoples, from the South as well as from the
North, from the East as well as from the West; by Italians, Germans,
Frenchmen, Spaniards, Englishmen, Belgians, Portuguese, Austrians,
Irishmen, Americans, Canadians, South Americans, Australians, as well as
by representatives of the faithful from the empire of China? Would this
new departure be anything more than the realization of the wish expressed
by that great and holy council held at Trent three centuries ago?
In passing from our own to other lands, we cannot do so, at the opening
of the second century of our country’s life, without a glance at
something larger and wider than the mere local interests of every-day
life which touch us most nearly. Beyond doubt there is much to criticise,
much, perhaps, to be ashamed of, much to deplore, in the conduct of our
government, local and national, and in the social state generally of
our people. Still, we see nothing at present existing or threatening
that is beyond the remedy of the people itself. It is a fashion among
our pessimists to contrast the America of to-day with the America of a
hundred years ago. Well, we believe that we can stand the contrast. The
country has expanded and developed, and promises so to continue beyond
all precedent in the history of this world. When the experiment of a
century ago is contrasted with the established fact--the nation--of a
free and prosperous people of to-day, we can only bless God. And allowing
the widest margin for the evils and shortcomings in our midst, when we
glance across the ocean at nations armed to the teeth, looking upon one
another as foes, and either rending with internal throes or threatening
to be rent, pride in this country deepens, and the heart swells with
gratitude that in these days God has raised up a nation where all men may
possess their souls in peace.
We have some alarmists among us who look in the near future to the
occurrence of scenes in this country similar to those now being
transacted in Europe, where men are persecuted for conscience’ sake.
We cannot share in these alarms. As we see no evils in our midst which
are beyond the remedy of the people, so we see no religious or other
questions that may arise which cannot be civilly adjusted. This is not
a country where the raw head and bloody bones thrive. The question of
religion is decided once for all in the Constitution. Catholics, of
course, have a large heritage of misrepresentation to contend against,
but that is rapidly diminishing. A Bismarck may strive to introduce into
our free country, through a band of fanatics and weak-minded politicians,
the persecuting spirit which he has attempted to introduce into England
by a Gladstone, which he has succeeded in introducing into Italy by a
Minghetti, and into Switzerland by a Carteret; but before they reach the
hundredth part of the influence of the disgraceful Know-Nothing party,
the good sense and true spirit of our countrymen will, as it did in the
case of that party, brand all who have had any prominent connection with
the movement with the note of infamy. The fanatical cry of “No Popery”
is evidently played out at its fountain-source in old England, while the
attempt to revive its echoes will meet with still less success in _new_
England. We see no clouds on the American horizon that should cause
Catholics any grave apprehension.
The end of such attempts always is that those who strike the sparks only
succeed in burning their fingers. All we have to do is to walk straight
along in the path we have been following of common citizenship with those
around us, in order to secure for ourselves all the rights which we are
ready to concede to others.
The European situation during the past year may be summed up under two
headings--the struggle between church and state, and the prospects of
war. To enter at any length into the question between church and state
in Germany and in other countries in Europe would be going over old
ground which has been covered time and again in THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Only
such features of the contest will be touched upon as may set the present
situation clearly before the mind of the reader.
The official _Provincial Correspondence_, at the opening of the past
year, said in a retrospective article on the events of 1874: “The
conviction has been forced upon the German government that the German
ultramontane party are a revolutionary party, directed by foreigners
and relying mainly upon the assistance of foreign powers. The German
government, therefore, are under the necessity of deprecating any
encouragement of the ultramontane party by foreign powers. It was for
this reason that the German government last year thought it incumbent
on them to use plain language in addressing the French government
upon the sayings and doings of some of the French bishops. France had
taken the hint, and had prevented her ultramontanes setting the world
on fire merely to vent their spite against Germany.… It was, perhaps,
to be expected under these circumstances that, abandoning at last all
hope of foreign assistance, the German ultramontanes would make their
peace with the government in Prussia, and no longer object to laws they
willingly obey in Baden, Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Oldenburg, not to speak
of Austria and other states. At all events, it was very desirable that
the ultramontanes should yield before the church was thrown into worse
confusion by their malicious but impotent resistance.”
Such was the pleasant prospect held out for the Catholics by the official
organ at the opening of the year. The programme sketched in it has been
faithfully carried out, and Germany has taken another step in the path of
freedom, internal peace, and consolidation by planting its foot nearer
the throat of the church. It is useless to enter into a refutation of
the falsehoods contained in the extract from the official journal.
They have been refuted in the German Reichstag and all the world over.
It is needless, also, to call attention to the tone of the official
journal, and the manner, become a fashion of late with German statesmen
and writers at large, of warning foreign powers to keep a civil tongue
in their heads respecting German matters, or it may be the worse for
them. How far the Catholics have yielded to the kindly invitation held
out to them the world has seen. We have before this remarked on the
strange anxiety manifested by a government, convinced of the justice of
its cause and the means it was pursuing towards its end, to stifle the
expression of public opinion, not only at home, but abroad. Moreover, the
very fact of its being compelled to deprecate “any encouragement of the
ultramontane party by foreign powers” says as plainly as words can say it
that those powers see something in the party to encourage.
Here is a sample--one out of hundreds such--of the manner in which the
members of the “revolutionary party” have been treated during the year,
and of the crimes, sympathy with which on the part of foreign powers is
so earnestly deprecated by the German government. That extremely active
agent of Prince Bismarck, the Prussian correspondent of the London
_Times_, tells the story of the deposition of the Bishop of Paderborn
by the “Ecclesiastical” Court thus: “He has been sentenced to-day (Jan.
6) to innumerable fines, chiefly for appointing clergymen without the
consent of the secular authorities. [Is this a crime, reverend and right
reverend gentlemen of the Protestant churches?] Never paying any of
these forfeits, he has been repeatedly imprisoned and forcibly prevented
from exercising his functions. [And now for the perversity of the man,
the “malicious but impotent resistance.”] Notwithstanding the measures
taken against him, he has continued his opposition to the state. He would
not allow his clerical training-schools to be visited by government
inspectors; he has declined to reappoint a chaplain he had excommunicated
without the consent of the government [What criminals SS. Peter and Paul
would be were they living in Germany to-day!]; and he has continually
issued pastorals and made speeches to deputations breathing the most
hostile sentiments against crown and parliament [sentiments not quoted].
He has received addresses covered with more than one hundred thousand
signatures, and on a single day admitted twelve thousand persons to his
presence, who had come to condole with him on the martyr’s fate he was
undergoing.” Let it be borne in mind that this is not our description,
but that of an agent of the Prussian government. Could words establish
more clearly the side on which the criminality lies?
Only passing mention can be made of events which have been already
anticipated and commented on. The extension of the civil registration
of births, deaths, and marriages from Prussia to the whole German
Empire passed in January. Perhaps no measure yet has so aroused the
indignation, not only of Catholics, but of believing Protestants also.
As the correspondent already quoted tersely puts the matter: “In all
Germany this law does away with the services of the clergy in celebrating
the three great domestic events of life.” That is to say, there is no
longer need to baptize Christian children in the name of God; there is no
longer need of God in the marriage service; finally, as man comes into
the world, so he may go out of it, without the name or the invocation of
God, without God’s blessing over his grave or the ceremonies of religion
attending the last act. Like a dog he may come, like a dog he may live,
like a dog he may go. And yet this is an evangelical power! Verily,
but of a strange evangel. The result of it is shown already. Since the
Prussian Civil Registration Law was passed, only twenty-five per cent.
of all Berlin marriages have been celebrated in churches, while only
thirty per cent. of the children born in the capital have been baptized
by clergymen.
The passing of the Landsturm Bill converts the whole German Empire into
an armed camp. “Henceforth every German sound in wind and limb must be a
soldier. From the age of seventeen to forty-two, every man not belonging
to the army or the reserve is to be liable to be called out in the case
of an actual or even a threatened invasion,” says the London _Times_. “At
the word of command Germany is arming _en masse_, and the surrounding
nations--that is, the best part of the world--cannot but do as she does.”
They are doing as she does, and all the European powers to-day sleep
beside their arms. In face of this fact, what comfort can men take from
the meeting and hobnobbing of the crowned heads of Europe here, there,
and everywhere, or of their assurances of peace? Who is strong enough to
keep the peace, who too weak to enkindle war? No man and no people. It
is this arming and incertitude of one another that alone prevented what
locally was so insignificant an affair as the outbreak within the year
of the Bosnian insurrection against Turkey from lighting a universal
conflagration. The eagles of the great powers gather around the Turkish
carcase. England seizes beforehand on the control of the Suez Canal by
way of preparing for eventualities, and the Eastern question begins at
last to resolve itself into this simple form: not, How shall we uphold
the empire? but, How shall we divide the spoils?
The present rulers of Germany profess to look upon their Catholic
subjects as the great foes of the German Empire. The mistake is a fatal
one; for in binding the church they bind the only power that can stop
the dry-rot which is slowly eating into the heart, not alone of Germany,
but of all nations to-day. That dry-rot is socialism, the first-born of
infidelity. That socialism prevails in Germany the rulers of that empire
know, and its utterances are as dreaded as an encyclical of the Pope.
Here are the elements of socialism as pictured by the Cologne _Gazette_
at the opening of the year: “In 1874, although the great bubble schemes
burst in the summer of 1873, and although last year a plentiful harvest
of corn and wine came to our relief, the consequences of the crisis
are still felt. Numerous undertakings are depreciated, and even more
lamentable than the losses of the promoters are the mischievous results
of the sudden excessive rise in wages, which could not possibly last, the
luxurious habits, the strikes, and all that these involve on the laboring
classes and the whole industrial life of the German nation. Habits of
indolence and gluttony have been established which it will be hard to
eradicate,” and much more in the same strain.
This is only a straw showing which way the wind blows. Persecution of the
church has not yet exhausted itself, though, beyond the actual taking of
life, it is hard to see what remains to be done. The final measure has
been resorted to of abrogating the articles of the Prussian constitution
of 1850, which were specially drawn up to provide freedom of religion and
worship in their fullest sense. Of the attitude of the German Catholics,
the prelates, the clergy, and the laity, it is needless to speak. The
world has witnessed it; and the very fierceness of the persecution simply
serves to show forth more gloriously the divinity of the church; for no
human institution could live under it. One result of the persecution has
been the return of a Catholic majority to the Bavarian Parliament. We
hope for the unity of the German Empire, and its true consolidation; but
it is not in our hearts to support tyranny, under whatever name, least
of all when it attacks all that we hold most sacred. The German policy
must be totally altered before it can command the sympathy of freemen.
It must be totally altered before it can command the respect and full
allegiance of its subjects, so large and important a section of whom are
Catholics. The Catholic majority in Bavaria is but one sign of many of
opposition to the one-sided policy of which Prince Bismarck is the author
and expounder. Who knows but that the threatened dissolution of an empire
erected on so false and narrow a basis has not already begun in Bavaria?
All the sacrifices made to establish the empire--not the least of which
were made by Bavaria--the German chancellor, by his determined and
senseless religious persecution, would now seem foolishly to ignore. And
these Bavarians, of all the Germans, once aroused, and their religious
rights infringed upon, are not the men quietly and meekly to subside
under opposition.
We have dwelt more at length upon Germany because it is the centre of the
strife that convulses, and threatens to convulse, the world. Other topics
must consequently be hastily dismissed.
Of France there is nothing but good to report. After a series of fiery
debates in the Assembly, the constitution of a conservative republic
was definitively formed and agreed upon towards the end of February.
The nomination of councillors of state was given to the President, who
resigned the nomination of the senators. Of course France is still open
to surprises, and the various parties seem as unable to coalesce as
ever. But there is no question that the government of Marshal MacMahon
has deserved well of the country, and, could only a true republic
be established in France, it would serve as a safe counter-check to
the absolutisms that threaten the east of Europe. The commerce and
industries of the country have advanced even on the preceding year,
though the imports of 1874 amounted to 3,748,011,000 francs, and the
exports to 3,877,753,000 francs, these figures being in excess of those
of any former years. The returns for the Paris savings-banks in 1874
indicate how the poorer and lower middle classes, who chiefly patronize
these establishments, are recovering from the effects of the war and
the Commune. The deposits amounted to 14,500,000 francs, while in 1873
they were 13,500,000 francs, and in 1872 12,629,000 francs. There is
every reason to believe that the ratio of the past year will show a
corresponding increase.
While the tokens of reviving prosperity are thus encouraging, those of a
revival of religious feeling and coming back to the old ways and the old
faith among the people at large are not less so. A noble and patriotic
work is being accomplished in the rapid formation and spread of Catholic
Working-men’s Clubs--a direct offset to the socialism fostered by the
spirit of irreligion in other places. The part taken by Catholic laymen
of standing and ability in this work, so full of happy promise, is in
itself a significant feature, and one that may well be recommended to the
attention of Catholic laymen all the world over. The pilgrimages to holy
shrines and to Rome have continued, spite of the laugh of the infidel
and the scorn of the unbeliever. The solemn consecration of the church
in Montmartre to the Sacred Heart was one in which the whole world was
interested. But the most encouraging measure of all was the obtaining,
after a fierce battle between religion and infidelity, of permission to
found free universities in France, where students who believe in God
might, if they chose, apply themselves to the study of their faith, or
at least carry on their studies under the divine protection and under
professors who, lacking nothing in intellect, recognize a higher than
themselves, whose law they have the courage to recognize and the sense
and piety to obey.
Surely, France was never so worthy of the esteem and profound respect of
all the world as it is to-day. What a wonderful vitality is displayed by
this Latin-Celtic race! What people could so suddenly recover from what
seemed so fatal a blow? What other nation would have shown so much wisdom
and self-control as these Frenchmen, whom the outside world stamped as
“unstable as water”? Is France to be the leader of the Latin-Celtic
races, to conform itself, consistently with its past history and
traditions, after a century of throes, into a political form of society
fitted to its present needs, its future prosperity, and the renewal of
religion? God grant that it be so!
England, true to its peace policy, still keeps aloof from the troubled
current of European affairs, beyond its recent move Eastward, which has
already been noticed. It steadily refused to accept the invitation of
Russia to join the International Conference on the Usages of War, which
in reality resembled a consultation among surgeons before beginning
to operate on an interesting subject. Mr. Disraeli’s premiership has
been marked by some irritating mistakes, though the securing control of
the Suez Canal was undoubtedly a move in the present critical state of
Eastern affairs that compensates for many a blunder--if he can only hold
the control. Mr. Gladstone finally retired from the leadership of the
liberal party, and was nominally succeeded by the Marquis of Hartington.
The ex-leader, abandoning a position which, take him all in all, he
undoubtedly adorned, went paddling in theology and got shipwrecked. The
Gladstone fulminations on “Vaticanism” are now a thing of the past, and
only afforded another melancholy instance of the facility with which
even great men can go beyond their depth. The portentous charges against
the Pope, the _Curia Romana_, the rusty arsenals, and the rest of the
papal “properties” were received by the English people themselves with
honest laughter or with passive scorn, until finally Mr. Gladstone lost
his temper, and then the world became tired both of him and his “rusty
tools.”
Materialism is taking deep root in the English mind. The leading organ of
English opinion, itself highly respectable, but by no means religious,
complained more than once during the year of the general apathy with
which the public regarded the doings of the various convocations and
general assemblies of the Protestant churches in England. And the success
with which the onslaught by such a man as Mr. Gladstone against the
Catholic Church met with at the hands of Englishmen reveals anew the fact
that religious feeling has fallen to so low an ebb in England that even
the most eloquent of bigots could not arouse an anti-Popery cry. And
this, for England, is the last stage of religious apathy.
Is this again the immediate precursor of a reaction in favor of the true
church in that land for which so many prayers have been offered up, and
the blood of so many martyrs has been shed?
Ireland has been quiet, calm, and peaceable, and though, in common with
England, suffering from the commercial depression which spread from
this country to them, it has shown a strong tendency to advance in
prosperity. For its peace the Catholic clergy, according to the testimony
of the London _Times_, and, as we believe, the Home-Rule party, are
jointly answerable. Men who believe in God and obey the laws of the
church will, with honest and able representatives, seek for no heroic
measures of reform, while the legislature is fairly open to complaints.
The London _Times_ says that the peaceful record of the year reads like
a fairy tale. Yet the Peace Preservation Acts were renewed, for which
the same journal could find no better reason than that “you cannot
break off abruptly from the past,” and goes on to say: “It is possible
that, if there never had been a resolution to impose upon a conquered
people a church which they rejected, and to endow it with the spoils
to which they remained attached; if there never had been a neglect so
little creditable to our statesmanship as the conditions under which
agricultural land was held in Ireland; if laws had never been passed to
deprive Roman Catholics of political privileges and the right to possess
property; if the attempt had never been made to rule the inhabitants of
the sister-island by a hostile garrison, that state of feeling would
never have been created which imposes upon the legislature of to-day the
sad necessity of maintaining an exceptional coercive legislation.” The
bitterest foe of England could scarcely add one iota to the force of this
terrible indictment of English legislation in Ireland.
But we look with all hope to the speedy dispersing of the clouds which
so long have hovered over this real “island of saints,” which has done
so much in the past and promises so much in the future for the spread of
faith among the peoples of the earth. More pleasing topics to touch upon
are the celebration of the centennial of Daniel O’Connell, the fiftieth
anniversary of the consecration of the venerable Archbishop McHale, and,
though last, far from least, the visit to Ireland of Cardinal McCloskey,
and his reception by Cardinal Cullen and the Irish people. The scene was
indeed a memorable one; the meeting on a soil consecrated with the blood
of saints and martyrs--a soil every inch of which could tell a tale of
a struggle of centuries for the faith--of two cardinals of the church
that guards the representatives, in their own persons, of the newest and
one of the oldest heritages of the church, and the one Irish by birth,
the other Irish by blood. A meeting no less significant was that in
England between the Cardinal of New York and Cardinal Manning, the first
convert probably who ever wore the title: a man of indomitable activity,
a fearless asserter of the rights of the church, and always foremost in
every movement which aims at the amelioration of the condition of the
working classes.
Russia continues her strides in the East, nearing Hindostan, and with
Hindostan the sea, at every step. Despite occasional reverses, her march
against the conflicting tribes and peoples that lie in her path can
only be regarded as irresistible. Meanwhile, at home she is eaten up by
sects and the socialistic spirit that pervades other nations, and which
tyranny may stifle for a time, but cannot destroy. Again the mistake
occurs of regarding the Catholic Church as her enemy, and dragooning her
Catholic subjects with a creed which their consciences reject. Austria
is engaged in the attempt to set her internal affairs in order, and to
recover from the defeat at Sadowa. She finds time, notwithstanding, to
attack the church, though without the persistent brutality of her German
neighbor, whose offer to procure a joint interference among the nations
in the election of the next pope was politely but firmly rejected by
Austria. In this path Italy also walks. Rejecting the rough hempen cord
with which Germany binds and strives to strangle the church, Italy, true
to her national character, chooses one of silk, which shall do the work
softly and noiselessly, but none the less securely. _Sensim sine sensu._
Thus the Law of Guarantees of 1871, which was founded on Cavour’s maxim
of “a free church in a free state,” provided for the absolute freedom of
the Pope in spirituals. This Germany resents, and early in the year made
strong remonstrance with Italy, to see, in plain English, if some plan
could not be devised by which the Pope might be muzzled and prevented
from issuing encyclicals and bulls and so forth, save only such as might
please the mind of present German statesmen. Italy refused to alter the
law. But now in November we find Minghetti, the president of the Council,
stating to his electors at Cologna-Veneta that there are defects in the
law of papal guarantees. The church--says that excellent authority, M.
Minghetti--is the congregation of all the faithful, including, of course,
M. Minghetti himself. But the state, on whom with the _jus protegendi_
devolves also the _jus inspiciendi_, is bound to see that the right of
the laity and the interest of the lower clergy be not sacrificed to the
abuse of papal and episcopal authority. Wherefore, M. Minghetti, urged
solely by the desire of seeing that no injustice is done, pledges his
electors that he will bring in a bill empowering the laity to reclaim the
rights to which they are entitled in the government of the church. How
far those rights extend, of course, remains to be seen.
The Holy Father is still spared to us in the full enjoyment of his
health and powers of mind. Pilgrims flock to him in thousands, and the
eyes of the world, friends and foes alike, look with sympathy upon him.
Surely now is the real triumph of his reign, and in his weakness shines
forth his true strength. No earthly motives, if ever they affected the
allegiance of Catholics to him, could affect it now. Yet what does the
world witness? As men regard things, a weak and powerless old man,
ruling, from the palace that is his prison, the hearts of two hundred
millions of people in the name and by the power of Jesus Christ, whose
saintly vicar he is. The Pope, lifted above all entanglements by recent
events with the political policy of so-called Catholic countries--his
voice, as the head of the church, is heard and respected by all nations
as perhaps it never was at any other period of time.
Spain opened with a new revolution--the re-entering of Alfonso, the son
of the exiled queen, to the kingdom and the throne from which she was
driven. This being said, the situation remains in much the same condition
that it has done for the past two years; if anything, notwithstanding
some defections and reverses, Don Carlos has gained in strength and
boldness. The move that brought in Don Alfonso was a good one, but it
came too late.
The customary chronic revolutions prevail in South America. The
assassination of Garcia Moreno, the able and good President of Ecuador,
by members of a secret society, added a unique chapter of horrors and
dastardly cowardice to the records of these societies, showing that to
accomplish their purpose they are ready to stab a nation. Garcia Mareno
died a martyr to his faith. From a far different cause, though by the
same means, died Sonzogno, the editor of the _Capitale_, the trial of
whose assassins furnished food for thought as to the force at work in
regenerated Italy. An event that might have been of great importance was
the death of the youthful Emperor of China, which was followed by that of
his wife. He was succeeded by a child five years old, and the government
seems to have passed into the hands of the same men who held it before,
so that a change for the better towards Christians is scarcely to be
hoped for, while Christian residents are still exposed at any moment to a
repetition of the Tien-Tsin massacre.
With the year closes the third quarter of the most eventful century,
perhaps, which the world has yet known, the first century of the
Christian era alone being excepted. It opened on what Lacordaire has well
called “a wild and stormy morning,” and he would be a bold prophet who
should predict a clear sky at the close. A writer of the day describes
nations within the past year as engaged in “a wild war-dance.” The
same is true of the century. Nations seem to have learned nothing, but
forgotten much. In forgetting the faith that made them whole they have
forgotten the secret of the elixir of national life. Hence, bitter as the
struggle is, a Catholic cannot but hope much in the near future from the
present trials of the church. The blows of Germany have crushed shams to
the earth, and caused the truth to shine forth resplendent and beautiful.
Whatever may be this faith that the nations have forgotten, that has been
a mockery among men of the world, it is manifest, at least, that there
is a profound reality in it, and a vitality that no power on earth can
hope to destroy. This testimony of strength in weakness, of the purest
devotion and loftiest sacrifices that this world can show, if it do
nothing else, at least brings men to ponder and look back, and compare
and inquire, and arrive at some conclusions. For the world cannot remain
an indifferent spectator to a question that is wide as the world. The
vagaries of belief, the churches with fronts of brass and feet of clay,
the parasites and the flatterers who, professing to worship and believe
in God alone, bow down in secret before the prince of this world, now
slink away in shame or stand abashed before the unbeliever.
Again, considering the intensity of the activity of the age, induced
in a great measure by the facilities of expressing and communicating
our thoughts, of reaching the uttermost parts of the earth in a
flash of time--all of which enhances the responsibility of our free
will--religion, in view of these facts, will have to keep pace with
this activity in order to perform the office for which God established
it upon earth. That she will do so is as much a matter of certitude
as her existence; for that same “Spirit which fills the whole earth”
finds in her bosom his dwelling-place. The general tendency to material
science, and the material interests of nations, which have so wonderfully
increased within the century, tend all to obscure the supernatural. But
there is nothing to be feared from the advocates of material science.
There is no escaping from God in his creation. And these men, in their
way, in common with the more open persecutors, are preparing for the
triumph of the church, and in the providence of God are co-workers in the
more complete demonstration of his divine truth.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
LIFE OF THE APOSTLE S. JOHN. By M. L. Baunard. Translated from
the first French edition. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society. 1875.
The life and character of S. John are so beautiful and so closely
connected with our Saviour that true believers have always craved to know
more about him.
On the other hand, his testimony is so positive and his language so
clear that all who blaspheme the divinity of our Lord have sought to
thrust him and his gospel out of sight. The distinguished French author
has a warm personal devotion to S. John, and has devoted himself with
great enthusiasm to the task of collecting all the historical facts
which remain to us as connected with the virgin apostle. His style is
manifestly infused with his spirit, and hence the work is one rather of
devotion than of cold, scientific dissertation.
“It is,” says the author in his preface, “a book of doctrine. I address
it to all those who desire to instruct themselves in the truth of God.
Truth has no school above that of the Gospel, and nowhere does it appear
fairer or more profound than in the gospel of S. John.
“It is a book of piety. I dedicate it to Christians: to priests--the
priesthood has no higher personification than S. John; to virgins--John
was a virgin; to mothers--he merited to be given as a son to the Mother
of God; to youth--he was the youngest of the apostles; to old men--it
is the name he gives himself in his epistles. I offer it to suffering
souls--he stood beside the cross; to contemplative souls--he was on Mt.
Thabor; to all souls who wish to devote themselves to their brethren, and
to love them in God--charity can have no purer ideal than the friend of
Jesus.”
It goes to fill up a most important gap in our English hagiography, and
will be greeted with much satisfaction by those desirous of having a
complete series of lives of the saints.
THE SHIP IN THE DESERT. By Joaquin Miller. Boston: Roberts
Brothers. 1875.
The _ad captandum_ title of this work leads one to look for an Arabian
romance; whereas the story has scarcely anything to do with it, and is
a very slender story at that. It is difficult to say whether the book
is worth reading or not; for while, no doubt, it contains passages of
considerable force and beauty, we are quite sure the poet himself does
not know half the time what he means. Now, this kind of thing is “played
out.” Far be it from us to accuse the divine Tennyson of straining and
affectation; but we do say there are peculiarities in his style which
it is dangerous to imitate. Taken as a model for classic and scholarly
verse, he has no equal in the English language. But the subjectivism of
his “enchanted reverie” may be easily “run into the ground.” Hence he has
given rise (we suspect he is full sore over it) to what may be called the
“Obscurantist” school of poetry. We think this school has had its day.
We hope the coming poets will happily combine the faultless diction of
Tennyson with the clear, strong thought of such masters as Milton, Byron,
and Longfellow.
THE THREE PEARLS; OR, VIRGINITY AND MARTYRDOM. By a Daughter of
Charity. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1875.
We presume this book is meant for a Christmas present. It is admirably
fitted for that purpose--beautifully printed and tastefully bound. But
the contents are still better worth having.
These “Three Pearls” were indeed “of great price”; three
virgin-martyrs--S. Cæcilia, S. Agnes, and S. Catharine of Alexandria.
No three saints, perhaps, could have been more happily chosen by the
gifted author as models for the young Catholic women of the day, and
particularly here in America. If it be objected that such heroines are
not imitable, the answer is obvious--that the virtues which led them to
become heroines are imitable by all. And, again, the “modern paganism”
with which we are familiar has many features in common with that amid
which they lived.
There is a prose sketch of each saint, followed by a tribute in verse.
The “Editor’s Preface” is from the pen of a learned priest in the Diocese
of Boston.
MEDULLA THEOLOGIÆ MORALIS. Auctore Augustino Rohling, S.
Theologiæ et Philosophiæ Doctore, Monasterii Guestfaliæ in
Academia Regia quondam, nunc in Seminario Salesiano prope
Milwaukee S. Theologiæ Professore. Cum permissu Superiorum. St.
Ludovici: Excudebat B. Herder, 19 South Fifth Street; et B.
Herder, Friburgi, Brisgoviæ. 1875.
The plan of the author in this work, as is implied in its title, has not
been to write a complete treatise on moral theology, but to furnish a
compendium containing the points necessary for confessors in the ordinary
discharge of their duties. Desirable as such a book is, there is of
course a difficulty in compiling it, arising from the variety of sound
opinions on many questions, which cannot all be given without extending
it beyond the limits which give it its special convenience, and which
opinions, nevertheless, it is at least expedient that every priest should
know. This difficulty is one, therefore, which cannot be overcome, and a
manual of this kind can never entirely supply the place of a larger work.
But it nevertheless has its use, and, when it is well done, cannot fail
to be a welcome addition to any theological library.
And this book is extremely welcome for it is extremely well done. It is
very well arranged; every point of importance is, we believe, given; it
is clearly written; it is adapted to the times and to this country, and
(which is a great merit) it is by no means dry. There is a little danger
in it on this last account, and that is that its superior attractiveness
may tend to induce neglect of larger works, and too great confidence in
statements which space will not allow the author to modify, as we have
said above.
One excellent feature of it is the sound and practical advice which it
contains, which is almost as important as the statement of theological
conclusions or of matters of law. It would be worth far more than its
price on this account alone.
THE HISTORY OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION IN GERMANY,
SWITZERLAND, ENGLAND, IRELAND, SCOTLAND, THE NETHERLANDS,
FRANCE, AND NORTHERN EUROPE. Seventh Edition. By the Most Rev.
M. J. Spalding, D.D. Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co. 1875.
THE EVIDENCES OF CATHOLICITY. Sixth Edition. By the Most Rev.
M. J. Spalding, D.D. Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co. 1875.
In the present editions an article on “Rome and Geneva” has been added
to _The History of the Reformation_, and a “Pastoral Letter on the
Infallibility of the Pope” to _The Evidences of Catholicity_--both having
been prepared by the late archbishop with a view to publication in his
collective works.
The same general criticism which we passed in our December number on
the revised edition of the _Miscellanea_ will apply to these volumes.
Archbishop Spalding’s works constitute a very complete armory from which
to select weapons to meet the opponents of the church in this country;
though the writings of European Catholics may be more to the purpose as
answers to the misrepresentations urged against her in their respective
localities. And there is no one writer to whom we would with greater
confidence refer Protestants who are willing to learn the truth (and we
would fain hope there are very many such), as his works relate to so many
supposed stumbling-blocks. Whether conscious of it or not, our separated
brethren are very blind followers of tradition--accepting unhesitatingly
the representations of writers of the last three centuries, while
faulting us for adhering to the unbroken traditions of all the Christian
centuries. Hence they are accustomed, when unable to reply to our
doctrinal arguments drawn from their translation of the Holy Scriptures,
to fall back on their own version of the religious revolution of the
XVIth century, and other historical events, the comparative condition of
Catholic and Protestant countries, etc., etc., all of which are treated
of at length in these volumes.
At a time when it is sought to revive the fell spirit of the defunct
Know-Nothing party, it is well to refresh our memories by a re-perusal of
the writings which were prompted by the previous manifestation.
The first-named work is at once a history of the Reformation and a review
of the most prominent books on the same subject, including D’Aubigné’s
popular romance. This treatment very much augments the interest with
which we pursue historical inquiries.
MR. GLADSTONE AND MARYLAND TOLERATION. By Richard H. Clarke,
LL.D. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1875.
This able pamphlet will wear a familiar look to our readers, its
principal contents having appeared as an article in our December number.
The writer has added biographical sketches of the first and second
Lords Baltimore, the Lawgivers of 1649, and of Father Andrew White, the
historiographer of the expedition which founded Maryland, and who was
intimately associated with the early fortunes of the colony.
It was really too bad in Dr. Clarke to deny asylum to the ex-premier on
our (reputed) hospitable shores, after the relentless logic to which he
was subjected at home, when proving so clearly to his own satisfaction
the disloyalty of Catholics--to spoil, in fact, his nice little story
that it was the Protestants, and not those hateful Catholics, who made
Maryland a refuge for fugitives from English persecution for conscience’
sake. And what makes the matter all the more aggravating is that our
author is in league with ever so many Protestants in this design. For
shame, gentlemen!
HISTORICAL SCENES FROM THE OLD JESUIT MISSIONS. By the Right
Rev. William Ingraham Kip, D.D., LL.D., member of the New
York Historical Society [and Protestant Episcopal Bishop of
California]. New York: A. D. F. Randolph & Co. 1875.
The author of this work had the good fortune while in England some years
since to secure a copy of _Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses écrites des
Missions Etrangéres_, in forty-seven volumes, “containing the letters
of the Jesuit missionaries from about 1650 to 1750.… He selected those
letters which relate to the labors of the Jesuits within the bounds of
our own land, and published a translation, with notes, under the title
of _The Early Jesuit Missions in North America_.” In the present work
he takes a wider range, and makes selections, from the same source, of
letters from parts of the world widely remote from each other--from
China and California; from Cape Horn and the far north; from the shores
of South America and the Mediterranean; from the monasteries of Mount
Lebanon and the Thebaid Desert.
Bishop Kip and his publishers have laid both Protestants and Catholics
under great obligations by the publication of this valuable and beautiful
volume. We can scarcely commend too highly the evident fairness of the
translation and of the accompanying remarks and notes. It could not well
be otherwise than that a Protestant should have some qualifications to
offer respecting statements of fact and doctrine such as would naturally
occur in these letters; but the Catholic reader will be gratified to
find much that is laudatory, and scarcely anything to which he would
object; the notes being for the most part historical and philological in
character. The naïve simplicity of these relations constitutes one of
their chief charms and the best answer to any suggestion of guile on the
part of the writers.
The principles and operations of the Jesuits have been, and to a
great extent are still, believed by our Protestant fellow-citizens to
constitute a vulnerable point in Catholicity, so that we rejoice at the
facilities offered by such writers as Parkman, Shea, and Kip for a better
understanding of the matter. Nothing can give Catholics greater pleasure
than that their Protestant friends should have full opportunities for
studying our doctrines and history.
LIFE OF S. BENEDICT, surnamed “The Moor,” the Son of a Slave.
Canonized by Pope Pius VII., May 24, 1807. From the French
of M. Allibert, Canon of the Primatial Church of Lyons.
Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham & Son. 1875.
This volume is a concise and well-written account of a holy life,
showing what abundant graces are often bestowed upon the meek and lowly,
and how those who humble themselves are exalted by Almighty God.
S. Benedict, the child of an enslaved negro parent, was born at
Sanfratello in Sicily, A.D. 1524. Early instructed in religion by his
parents, he offered himself to God, and became eminent for sanctity as a
religious. Seeking always the lowest and most humiliating employments, he
served for twenty-seven years as a cook in a convent. Already, during his
lifetime, regarded as a saint, he was venerated by all classes. “At the
door of his humble kitchen,” says his biographer, “were to be seen the
nobles of Palermo, who sought to honor the saint and recommend themselves
to his prayers, the learned who came for advice, the afflicted who
desired consolation, the sick who hoped for the recovery of their health,
and the indigent who desired assistance.”
Winning by his wisdom and virtues the confidence of his brethren, he
was chosen guardian of the convent, and afterwards vicar, and master of
novices--positions which he accepted with extreme reluctance, and in
which he proved his great charity and humility.
But the more he sought to abase and hide himself, the greater the graces
bestowed upon him. Though blessed with the spirit of prophecy, the
power of performing miracles, and the gift of ecstasy, so great was his
humility that he again turned to his simple occupation, and retained it
till his death, which occurred in 1589.
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF PAUL SEIGNERET, Seminarist of S.
Sulpice (shot at Belleville, Paris, May 26, 1871). From the
French. New York: P. O’Shea. 1875.
The title of this work can scarcely fail to awaken an interest in the
youthful hero who gave his life for his faith--an interest which is
enhanced by the knowledge that this youth, frail as a girl and possessed
of a highly-cultivated mind and rare sensibility, was so filled with
the spirit of self-sacrifice that he may well be classed with those
“courtiers of martyrdom” whose lives are the glory of the church and the
wonder of the world.
Paul Seigneret’s is a name that must be dear to all Catholics at all
familiar with his saintly life and death. To a heart overflowing with
love for all who had claims upon his affection and charity for all
mankind, and to those quick and delicate perceptions which retain all
that is good and instinctively reject all that is evil, was added a
fervent piety and ardent zeal for the glory of God. Animated by these
sentiments, he sought the priesthood, and soon turned his thoughts to
the cloister--“‘that pure and shining height’ whither he would go to fix
his dwelling nearer heaven.” While yet a student in the Seminary of S.
Sulpice, he fell a victim to the Commune, and was permitted to win the
crown of martyrdom, which had been the object of his most ardent desires.
The volume before us is one which we would especially recommend to our
youthful readers, who will find in it much that is edifying and worthy of
imitation. In an age in which respect for authority and filial obedience
are so much ignored, we cannot place too high a value on the example of
Paul Seigneret, whose devotion and submission to his parents were second
only to his love of God.
If a work so admirable in most respects may be criticised, we would
say that it would be quite as interesting if the author had condensed
the valuable materials of which it is composed. We are aware of the
difficulties under which many translations from the French are made.
Innumerable things in that versatile, flexible language will bear many
repetitions and much minutiæ in description, which will not admit of more
than the simple statement in our unyielding vernacular. Readers should
therefore hesitate in pronouncing a book dull because some of the aroma
escapes in the transition from one medium of thought to another.
PASTORAL LETTER OF THE RIGHT REV. P. N. LYNCH, D.D., BISHOP
OF CHARLESTON, ON THE JUBILEE OF 1875. New York: The Catholic
Publication Society. 1875. 8vo, pp. 299.
The reader will rightly infer from the size of this pastoral that it
differs in many respects from other documents of the kind. The learned
author has taken occasion to enter very fully into the doctrinal and
historical aspects of his subject, thereby making the publication a
valuable reference to all who would understand the history and nature of
this observance.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXII., No. 131.--FEBRUARY, 1876.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev. I. T.
HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
A SEQUEL OF THE GLADSTONE CONTROVERSY.[228]
“It is wonderful,” wrote Proudhon, “how in all our political questions we
always stumble on theology.” Mr. Gladstone will doubtless concur in this
sentiment; for he cannot take a step without stumbling on the Catholic
Church. She is everywhere, and everywhere she is to him a cause of alarm.
So potent is her influence growing to be, so cunningly laid are the
plans by which her policy is directed, so perfect is the organization
and discipline of her forces, so insidious are her methods of procedure,
as he would have us believe, that it is full time all Christendom should
be warned of the approaching danger. She is in his eyes an ever-present
menace to the civilization of the world.
He at least bears testimony to her power and vitality. She is not a
relic of a past age; she lives, and, what is more, it does not seem
that she is willing to die. If we consider the various efforts by which
men are seeking to weaken and destroy the church, we shall find in them
no mean evidence of her divine strength. And first of all, in an age
intellectually most active, she is the subject of universal criticism,
and is cited before every tribunal of human knowledge to be tried on
an hundred different and often contradictory counts. Her historical
relations with the world, extending over eighteen hundred years and
co-extensive with Christendom, are minutely examined into by men who,
shutting their eyes to the benefits which she has conferred upon the
human race, are eager to discover charges against her. She is made
responsible for the crimes of those who called themselves Catholics,
though she was the first to condemn their evil deeds. The barbarism, the
ignorance, and the cruelty of the middle ages are set to her count, when,
in fact, she was the chief source of civilization, of enlightenment, and
of mercy during that period. When she opposes the tyranny of kings,
she is called the enemy of the state; when she seeks to restrain the
lawlessness of the people, she is proclaimed the friend of tyrants.
Against her dogmas and institutions all the sciences are brought to
bear--astronomy, geology, ethnology, and the others. Not in politics
alone, but in all the physical sciences, men in our day stumble on the
Catholic Church.
We are told that she is the one great spiritual organization which is
able to resist, and must as a matter of life and death resist, the
progress of science and modern civilization. These men profess to find
innumerable points of collision between her dogmas and the conclusions
of science, and are surprised when she claims to understand her own
teachings better than they, and is not prepared to abandon all belief in
God, the soul, and future life because physical research has given men
a wider knowledge of the phenomena of matter. Now we hear objections to
her moral teaching--that it is too severe, that she imposes burdens upon
men’s shoulders too heavy for human nature to bear, that she encourages
asceticism, celibacy, and all manner of self-denial opposed to the spirit
of the age and of progress; then, on the contrary, that her morality is
lax, that she flatters the passions of men, panders to their sensual
appetites, and grants, for gain, permission to commit every excess.
At one time we are told that her priests are indolent, immoral,
ignorant, without faith; at another, that they are ceaselessly active,
astute, learned, and wholly intent upon bringing all men to their own
way of thinking. Now we are informed that her children cannot be loyal
subjects of any government; and immediately after we hear that they
are so subservient, so passively obedient, that they willingly submit
to any master. And here we come more immediately upon our subject; for
whereas Mr. Gladstone has declared that the loyalty of Catholics is not
to be trusted, M. de Laveleye asserts that “despotic government is the
congenial government of Catholic populations.”
The pamphlet from which we quote these words, and which we propose now
to examine, has been presented to the English-reading public by the
special request of Mr. Gladstone, and has been farther honored by him
with a prefatory letter. The author, it is true, takes a fling at the
Church of England, and plainly intimates that in his opinion it is little
better than the Catholic Church; but the ex-premier could not forego the
opportunity of striking his enemy, though he should pierce his dearest
friend in giving the blow. He takes the precaution, indeed, to disclaim
any concurrence in M. de Laveleye’s “rather unfavorable estimate of the
Church of England in comparison with the other reformed communions.” The
question discussed in the pamphlet before us, as its title implies, is
the relative influence of Catholicism and Protestantism on the liberty
and prosperity of nations; and the conclusion which is drawn is that the
Reformation is favorable to freedom and progress, and that the Catholic
Church is a hindrance to both.
This has long been a favorite theme with Protestants--the weapon with
which they think themselves best able to do good battle in their cause;
and doubtless it is employed, in most favorable circumstances, in an
age like ours, in which material progress is so marked a feature that
its influence may be traced in everything, and in nothing more than in
the thoughts and philosophies of the men of our day. It is worthy of
remark that Protestantism, professing to be a purer and more spiritual
worship, should have tended to turn men’s thoughts almost exclusively
to the worldly and temporal view of religion; so that it has become the
fashion to praise Christianity, not because it makes men humble, pure,
self-denying, content with little, but rather because its influence is
supposed to be of almost an opposite nature. Much stress is laid upon the
physical, social, and mental superiority of Christian nations to those
that are still pagan, and the inference implied, if not always expressly
stated, is that these temporal advantages are due to the influence of
Christianity, and prove its truth and divine origin. Without stopping
to consider the question whether the material and social superiority of
Christian nations is to be attributed to their religious faith, we may
ask whether, admitting that this is the case, it may with propriety be
adduced in proof of the truth of the religion of Christ?
In the case of individuals no one, certainly, would think of arguing
that prosperity proves a right faith, or even consistent practice. To
hold that wealth and success are evidences of religious life, whatever
it may be, is certainly not Christianity. Does the teaching of Christ
permit the rich to lay the unction to their souls that they are God’s
favored children? Were they his friends? Did they flock around him? Did
they drink in his words gladly? If men who claim to be his disciples
have deified worldly success, and made temporal prosperity a sufficient
test of the truth of his religion, they cannot plead any word of his in
excuse.
He certainly never paid court to the great, or stooped to flatter the
rich. Was it not he who said, “Woe be to you rich: ye have received your
reward”? and again, “It is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of
heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle”? Did he not
take Lazarus to his bosom when Dives was in hell?
“Blessed are ye,” he said, “when men shall revile you, and persecute
you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.
Rejoice and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven: for so
persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”
The preaching of Christ was wholly unworldly. He sternly repressed the
earthly ambitions of his disciples, and declared that, as the world
hated him, it would also hate those who believed in him. They would be
outcasts for his name’s sake; if this life were all, they of all men
would be most miserable. Indeed, he rarely speaks of human happiness in
the customary sense; he passes over what might be said in favor of this
life, and brings out in bold relief its vanity and unsatisfactoriness. He
draws no pictures of domestic bliss, and says but little of even innocent
pleasures or those temporal blessings which are so sweet to all; and as
he taught that worldly prosperity is no evidence of God’s favor, he was
careful to correct the error of those who looked upon misfortune as a
proof of guilt, as in the case of the man born blind and of those upon
whom a tower had fallen.
Christ was poor, his apostles were poor, his disciples were poor,
nearly all the Christians of the first ages were poor; and yet every
day we hear men talk as though they considered poverty and Christianity
incompatible. This is manifestly the opinion of M. de Laveleye. His
argument may be stated in this way: England and Scotland are rich,
Ireland is poor. The Protestant cantons of Switzerland are rich,
the Catholic are poor. “In the United States,” says De Tocqueville,
“the greater part of the Catholics are poor.” In fact, wherever the
two religions exist together, the Protestants are more active, more
industrious, and consequently richer than the Catholics.
This is the substance of what is spread over a dozen pages of the
pamphlet. The conclusion is not difficult to draw: Protestants are richer
than Catholics, and therefore better Christians.
“No man can serve two masters,” said Christ: “you cannot serve God and
Mammon.” On the contrary, says M. de Laveleye, the success with which you
worship Mammon is the best proof that you serve God truly. Of course it
would be foreign to M. de Laveleye’s purpose to stop to inquire whether
the poverty of Ireland be due to the Catholic faith of her people or to
the rapacity and misgovernment of England; whether that of the Catholic
cantons of Switzerland might not be accounted for by the fact that they
are mountainous, with an inhospitable climate and a barren soil; and
whether even M. de Tocqueville’s assertion that the greater part of the
Catholics of the United States are poor might not be satisfactorily
explained by stating that the greater part of them are emigrants who
have recently landed upon these shores without a superabundance of this
world’s goods.
He had also good reasons, while treating this part of his subject, for
not looking nearer home. He had in Belgium, under his very eye, one of
the most thrifty, industrious, and prosperous peoples of Europe, and
at the same time one of the most Catholic. Why did he not compare the
wealth of Belgium with that of Sweden or Denmark? Why did he not say a
word about Catholic France, whose wealth and thrift cannot be denied. He
does, indeed, make mention of two French manufacturing towns, in which,
he states, on the authority of M. Audiganne, the capitalists are for
the most part Protestants, whilst the operatives are Catholics; though
what this has to do with any debatable question between Catholicism and
Protestantism is not easily seen.
The assertion (p. 14) that “wherever the two religions co-exist in the
same country the Protestants are more active, more industrious, more
economical, and consequently richer than the Catholics,” is not borne
out by facts. A single example will suffice to show how rash M. de
Laveleye has been in making so wide an affirmation. The Catholics of the
Rhine Province are universally acknowledged to be among the most thrifty
and enterprising populations of Prussia, and are far richer than, for
instance, the Protestants of Pomerania.
It would not be difficult, by adopting M. de Laveleye’s mode of
reasoning, to turn his whole argument on this point against his own
position. Whether or not national wealth, we might say, is evidence of
orthodox Christian faith, there can be no doubt but that the Christian
religion is favorable to even the temporal interests of the lowest and
most degraded classes of society. Its doctrines on the brotherhood of the
race and the equality of all before God first inspired worthy notions
of the dignity of man. Then the sympathy which it created for the poor,
the suffering, and the oppressed naturally set men to work to devise
means for the relief of human misery. It is to its influence that we
must ascribe the abolition of slavery, the elevation of woman, and the
thousand ministries which in Christian lands attend on the wretched and
the weak.
We must infer that those nations in which this influence is most
powerful--which, in other words, are most truly Christian--will have, in
proportion to their population, the smallest class of human beings cursed
by the worst plague known to modern civilization, bearing with it, as it
does, a threefold degradation, moral, physical, and social. We of course
refer to pauperism.
Now, in England, from whose wealth M. de Laveleye would infer the
superiority of her religion, we find that this pauper class, compared
with the whole population, is as 1 to 23; whereas in Ireland, which is
poor--and, according to this theory, for that reason under the ban of
a false religion--there is but 1 pauper to 90 inhabitants; in other
words, pauperism is four times more common in England than in Ireland.
Now, whether we refer this fact to England’s wealth or to England’s
religion--and in M. de Laveleye’s opinion they are correlative--our
conclusion must be either that the influence of the Christian religion,
which necessarily tends to promote the temporal well-being of the most
degraded classes of society, is less felt in England than in Ireland,
or else that national wealth is hurtful to the interests of these same
classes, and consequently opposed to the true Christian spirit; and
in either case we have Catholic Ireland more fairly Christian than
Protestant England. We would not have our readers think for a moment that
we are seriously of the opinion that our argument proves anything at all.
We give it merely as a specimen of the way in which the reasoning of this
pamphlet may be turned against its own conclusions, though, in fact, we
have done the work too respectably.
We cannot forget, if M. de Laveleye does, that, of all sciences, the
social--if, indeed, it may be said as yet to exist at all--is the
most complex and the most difficult to master. The phenomena which it
presents for observation are so various, so manifold, and so vast, our
means of observation are so limited, our methods so unsatisfactory, and
our prejudices so fatal, that only the thoughtless or the rash will
tread without suspicion or doubt upon ground so uncertain and so little
explored.
M. de Laveleye himself furnishes us an example of how easily we may go
astray, even when the way seems plain.
“Sectarian passions,” he writes (p. 11), “or anti religious prejudice
have been too often imported into the study of these questions. It
is time that we should apply to it the method of observation and the
scientific impartiality of the physiologist and the naturalist. When
the facts are once established irrefragable conclusions will follow.
It is admitted that the Scotch and Irish are of the same origin. Both
have become subject to the English yoke. Until the XVIth century Ireland
was much more civilized than Scotland. During the first part of the
middle ages the Emerald Isle was a focus of civilization, while Scotland
was still a den of barbarians. Since the Scotch have embraced the
Reformation, they have outrun even the English.… Ireland, on the other
hand, devoted to ultramontanism, is poor, miserable, agitated by the
spirit of rebellion, and seems incapable of raising herself by her own
strength.” The conclusion which is drawn from all this, joined with such
other facts as the late victories of Prussia over Austria and France, is
that “Protestantism is more favorable than Catholicism to the development
of nations.”
We may as well pause to examine this passage, which, both with regard to
the statement of facts and to the interpretation put upon them, fairly
represents the style and method of the pamphlet before us.
“It is admitted that the Scotch and Irish are of the same origin.” This
is true, as here stated, only in the sense that both are descended of
Adam; and hence it would have been as much to the point to affirm that
all the nations of the earth are of the same origin. The Scots were,
indeed, an Irish tribe; but when they invaded Caledonia, they found it
in the possession of the Picts, of whom whether they were of Celtic or
Teutonic race is still undecided. The power of the Scots themselves
declined in the XIIth century, when Scotland fell under the influence
of the Anglo-Norman Conquest, and the Celtic population either withdrew
towards the north, or, by intermarriage with the conquerors, formed a new
type; so that the people of that country are even yet divided into two
great and distinct stocks differing from each other in language, manners,
and dress.
“Until the XVIth century,” continues M. de Laveleye, “Ireland was much
more civilized than Scotland. During the first part of the middle ages
the Emerald Isle was a focus of civilization, while Scotland was still a
den of barbarians.” Now, it was precisely in those ages in which Ireland
was “a focus of civilization” that the Catholic faith of her people
shone brightest. It was then that convents sprang up over the whole
island; that the sweet songs of sacred psalmody, which so touched the
soul of Columba, were heard in her groves and vales; that the sword was
sheathed, and all her people were smitten with the high love of holy life
and were eager to drink at the fountains of knowledge. It was then that
she sent her apostles to Scotland, to England, to France, to Germany,
to Switzerland, and to far-off Sicily; nor did she remit her efforts in
behalf of civilization until the invading Danes forced her children to
defend at once their country and their faith.
But let us follow M. de Laveleye: “Since the Scotch have embraced the
reformed religion, they have outrun even the English.… Ireland, on the
other hand, devoted to ultramontanism, is poor, miserable, agitated by
the spirit of rebellion, and seems incapable of raising herself by her
own strength.”
We cannot think that Mr. Gladstone had read this passage when he
requested the author to have his pamphlet translated into English; for
we cannot believe that he is prepared to lay the misfortunes of Ireland
to the influence of the Catholic faith upon her people, and not to the
cruelty and misgovernment of England.
The Irish Catholics are reproached with their poverty, when for two
hundred years the English government made it a crime for them to own
anything. They are taunted with their misery, when for two centuries
they lived under a code which placed them outside the pale of humanity;
of which Lord Brougham said that it was so ingeniously contrived that
an Irish Catholic could not lift up his hand without breaking it; which
Edmund Burke denounced as the most proper machine ever invented by
the wit of man to disgrace a realm and degrade a people; and of which
Montesquieu wrote that it must have been contrived by devils, ought to
have been written in blood and registered in hell!
Ireland is found fault with because she is agitated with the spirit of
rebellion, when even to think of the wrongs she has suffered makes the
blood to boil. Is it astonishing that she should be poor when England,
with set purpose, destroyed her commerce and ruined her manufacturing
interests, fostering at the same time a policy fatal to agriculture, the
aim of which, it would seem, was to force the Irish to emigrate, that the
whole island might be turned into a grazing ground for the supply of the
English markets?
“What a contrast,” further remarks M. de Laveleye (p. 12), “even in
Ireland, between the exclusively Catholic Connaught and Ulster, where
Protestantism prevails!”
Mr. Gladstone certainly cannot be surprised at this contrast, nor will he
seek its explanation in the baneful influence of the Catholic Church. He
at least knows the history of Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland; he has read
of the massacres of Drogheda and Wexford; he knows the fate of the eighty
thousand Catholic Irishmen whom Cromwell drove into the ports of Munster,
and shipped like cattle to the sugar plantations of the Barbadoes, there
to be sold as slaves; nor is he ignorant of what was in store for those
Irish Catholics who were still left; of how they were driven out of
Ulster, Munster, and Leinster across the Shannon into Connaught--that is,
into the bogs and wild wastes of the most desolate part of Ireland--there
to die of hunger or cold, or to survive as best they might. Five-sixths
of the Catholics had perished; the remainder were driven into barren
Connaught; the Protestants settled on the rich lands of Ulster, Munster,
and Leinster; and now here comes good M. de Laveleye to find that
Connaught is poor because it is Catholic, and Ulster is rich because it
is Protestant. But we must not forget Scotland.
“Since the Scotch,” says M. de Laveleye, “have embraced the reformed
religion, they have outrun even the English.”
We shall take no pains to discover whether or in what respect, or how
far the Scotch surpass the English. The meaning of the words which we
have just quoted is evidently this: The progress which the Scotch have
made during the last three centuries, in wealth and the other elements of
material greatness, must be ascribed to the influence of the Protestant
religion.
To avoid even the suspicion of unfairness in discussing this part of the
subject, we shall quote the words of an author who devoted much time
and research to the study of the character and tendencies of Scotch
Presbyterianism, and whose deeply-rooted dislike of the Catholic Church
is well known:
“To be poor,” says Buckle (_History of Civilization_, vol. ii.
p. 314), describing the doctrines of the Scotch divines of
the XVIIth century--“to be poor, dirty, and hungry; to pass
through life in misery and to leave it with fear; to be plagued
with boils and sores and diseases of every kind; to be always
sighing and groaning; to have the face streaming with tears
and the chest heaving with sobs; in a word, to suffer constant
affliction and to be tormented in all possible ways--to undergo
these things was a proof of goodness just as the contrary was
a proof of evil. It mattered not what a man liked, the mere
fact of his liking it made it sinful. Whatever was natural was
wrong. The clergy deprived the people of their holidays, their
amusements, their shows, their games, and their sports; they
repressed every appearance of joy, they forbade all merriment,
they stopped all festivities, they choked up every avenue by
which pleasure could enter, and they spread over the country
an universal gloom. Then truly did darkness sit on the land.
Men in their daily actions and in their every looks became
troubled, melancholy, and ascetic. Their countenance soured and
was downcast. Not only their opinions, but their gait, their
demeanor, their voice, their general aspect, were influenced
by that deadly blight which nipped all that was genial and
warm. The way of life fell into the sere and yellow leaf; its
tints gradually deepened; its bloom faded and passed off;
its spring, its freshness, and its beauty were gone; joy and
love either disappeared or were forced to hide themselves in
obscure corners, until at length the fairest and most endearing
parts of our nature, being constantly repressed, ceased to
bear fruit and seemed to be withered into perpetual sterility.
Thus it was that the national character of the Scotch was in
the XVIIth century dwarfed and mutilated.… They [the Scotch
divines] sought to destroy not only human pleasures, but human
affections. They held that our affections are necessarily
connected with our lusts, and that we must therefore wean
ourselves from them as earthly vanities. A Christian had no
business with love or sympathy. He had his own soul to attend
to, and that was enough for him. Let him look to himself.
On Sunday, in particular, he must never think of benefiting
others; and the Scotch clergy did not hesitate to teach the
people that on that day it was sinful to save a vessel in
distress, and that it was a proof of religion to leave ship
and crew to perish. They might go; none but their wives and
children would suffer, and that was nothing in comparison with
breaking the Sabbath. So, too did the clergy teach that on
no occasion must food or shelter be given to a starving man,
unless his opinions were orthodox. What need for him to live?
Indeed, they taught that it was a sin to tolerate his notions
at all, and that the proper course was to visit him with sharp
and immediate punishment. Going yet farther, they broke the
domestic ties and set parents against their offspring. They
taught the father to smite the unbelieving child, and to slay
his own boy sooner than to allow him to propagate error. As
if this were not enough, they tried to extirpate another
affection, even more sacred and more devoted still. They laid
their rude and merciless hands on the holiest passion of which
our nature is capable--the love of a mother for her son.… To
hear of such things is enough to make one’s blood surge again,
and raise a tempest in our inmost nature. But to have seen
them, to have lived in the midst of them, and yet not to have
rebelled against them, is to us utterly inconceivable, and
proves in how complete a thraldom the Scotch were held, and how
thoroughly their minds as well as their bodies were enslaved.”
The XVIIth century, which was the golden age of French literature, and
also of the Catholic Church in France, threw almost total darkness over
Scotland, which during that period was most completely under the power of
Protestantism. The clergy governed the nation; they were the only men of
real influence; and yet there was no philosophy, no science, no poetry,
no literature worth reading. “From the Restoration,” says Laing, “down
to the Union the only author of any eminence whom Scotland produced was
Burnet.”
If the thrift and industry of the Scotch are due to Protestantism,
to what shall we ascribe the enterprise and commerce of the Catholic
republics of Venice and Genoa during the middle ages?
If England’s wealth to-day comes from the Reformation, how shall we
account for that of Spain in the XVIth and XVIIth centuries? And if the
decline of Spain has been brought about by the Catholic faith, to what
cause shall we assign that of Holland, who in the XVIIth century ruled
the seas and did the carrying trade of Europe?
M. de Laveleye’s way of accounting for the prosperity of nations is
certainly simple, but we doubt whether it would satisfy any respectable
schoolboy. Unfortunately for such as he, there is no rule of three by
which social problems may be solved. Race, climate, soil, political
organization, and many other causes, working through ever-varying
combinations, must all be considered if we would understand the history
of material progress. As labor is the most fruitful cause of wealth,
there is a necessary relation between national wealth and national
habits, which are the outcome of a thousand influences, one of the most
powerful of which undoubtedly is religious faith. But who does not know
that climate influences labor, not only by enervating or invigorating
the laborer, but also by the effect it produces on the regularity of
his habits? If the Italian loves the _dolce far niente_, while the New
Englander makes haste to grow rich as though some demon whom gold could
bribe pursued him, shall we find the secret of their peculiar characters
in their religious faith or in the climate in which they live, or shall
we not rather seek it in a combination of causes, physical and moral?
We have assuredly no thought of denying the intimate connection which
exists between faith and character or between a nation’s religion and its
civilization. We are willing even to affirm that not only the general
superiority of Christian nations, but their superior wealth also, is in
great measure attributable to their religion. And now, bidding adieu to
M. de Laveleye for a while, we propose to discuss this subject, to which
we have already alluded, somewhat more fully.
Christianity certainly does not measure either the greatness or the
happiness of a people by its wealth, nor does it take as its ideal that
state of society in which “the millionaire is the one sole god” and
commerce is all in all; in which “only the ledger lives, and only not all
men lie.”
Whether we consider individuals or associations of men, the Catholic
Church does not hold and cannot hold that material interests are the
highest. To be noble, to be true, to be humble, to be pure, is, in her
view, better than to be rich. Man is more than money, which is good only
in so far as it serves to develop his higher nature.
“The whole aim of man is to be happy,” says Bossuet. “Place happiness
where it ought to be, and it is the source of all good; but the source of
all evil is to place it where it ought not to be.”
“It is evident,” says S. Thomas, “that the happiness of man cannot lie
in riches. Wealth is sought after only as a support of human life. It
cannot be the end of man; on the contrary, man is its end.… The longing,
moreover, for the highest good is infinite. The more it is possessed,
the more it is loved and the more all else is despised; for the more it
is possessed, the better is it known. With riches this is not the case.
No sooner are they ours than they are despised, or used as means to some
other end; and this, as it shows their imperfect nature, is proof that in
them the highest good is not to be found.”
If wealth is not the highest good of individuals, is it of nations? What
is the ideal of society? The study of the laws which govern national life
must necessarily begin with this question, which all who have dealt with
the subject, from Plato to Comte and Mill, have sought to answer. It is
manifest that each one’s attempt to solve this problem will be based upon
his views on the previous question: What is the ideal of man? This, in
turn, will be answered according to each one’s notions of the ideal of
God; and here we have the secret of the phenomenon which so surprised
Proudhon--the necessary connection between religion and society, theology
and politics.
Is there a God, personal, distinct from nature? Or is nature the only
god, and science her prophet? It is right here at this central point that
men are dividing; it is here we must place ourselves, if we would view
the two great armies that in all Christendom are gathering for a supreme
conflict.
There is a form of infidelity in our day--and it is the one into which
all unbelief must ultimately resolve itself--which starts with this
assumption: “Whether or not there is a God must for ever remain unknown
to man.” It reasons in this way: “This whole subject belongs within
the region, not only of the unknown, but of the unknowable. It is an
insoluble riddle, and the philosophies and theologies which have sought
to unravel it, if only idle, might deserve nothing more than contempt;
but they have been the bane of human thought, have soured all the
sweetness of life, and therefore ought to be visited with the execration
of mankind. Since religion is a subject about which nothing can be known,
what is so absurd as to spend time upon it? What so absurd as to divert
the thoughts of men from subjects in which thinking is fruitful to those
in which it must for ever remain barren of all except evil results? What
so absurd as to set them working for a future life, of which we can
never know whether it exists at all, when we might at least teach them
how to make the present one worth having? The paradise of the future,
which the prophetic eye of science can already descry, is _in_ the world,
not _beyond_ it; and to seek to hasten its approach is the highest and
only worthy object in life.” As we take it, this is the creed of modern
unbelief, to which as yet few will openly subscribe, but toward which all
its hundred conflicting schools of thought are moving. Few men indeed are
able to perceive the logical outcome of their opinions, and still fewer
have the courage to confess what they more than half suspect.
This superstition is a return to the nature-worship of paganism, but
under a different aspect. Of old, nature was worshipped as revealed to
sense, and now as revealed to thought; then as beautiful, now as true
or useful. The first was artistic, and form was its symbol; the last is
scientific, and law is its expression. The religion of humanity is only a
phase of this worship; for in it man is considered, not as the child of
God, but as the product of nature.
And now what has this to do with the ideal of society or the wealth of
nations? At the basis of all social organization lies morality, as it
is by conduct that both individuals and nations are saved or lost. The
history of the human race shows that religion and morality are intimately
related. That there have been good atheists does not affect the truth
of this proposition any more than that there have been bad Christians.
Men are usually better or worse than their principles; practice and
profession rarely accord; and this is remarked because it ought not to
exist.
Conduct, to be rational, should be motived, and consequently referable to
certain general principles by which it is justified. To be particular, a
man who believes in God, the Creator, a Father as just as he is good, has
fundamental motives of action which are wanting to the atheist. The one
should seek to approve himself to his heavenly Father; the other cannot
go farther than conform to the laws of nature. To the one this life, as
compared with that which is to be, is of value only as it relates to it;
to the other it is all in all. And since the ultimate end of society
is the welfare of the associated, the one will regard this end from a
transcendental point of view, taking in time and eternity; the other will
consider it merely with reference to man’s present state. Their notions
of life, of its ends, aims, and proper surroundings, will be radically
different.
Suppose for a moment that religious beliefs are mere dreams, fancies of
sick brains; is it not at once manifest that human life is a much poorer
and sorrier thing than it is commonly thought to be? As the light of
heaven fades away, do not all things grow dark, leaving us in the shadow
of death, despairing or debauched, sullen or frantic? The poet’s dream,
the mother’s fond hope, the heart’s deep yearning, the mind’s flight
towards the infinite, all become flat, meaningless, and unprofitable. Men
are simply animals chained to this clod, too happy if the heaven-seeking
eye permitted them to see it alone. Trouble, danger, and physical
pain are the only evils, and virtue is the sharp-sighted prudence
which enables us to avoid them. Self-denial is not only useless, it is
irrational. Our appetites are good and ought to be indulged. Nothing,
of its own nature, is sinful; excess alone is wrong; all indulgence,
provided it hurt no one, is good--nay, it is necessary. Whoever denies
any one of his appetites the food it craves cripples himself, is maimed
and incomplete. “He may be a monk; he may be a saint; but a man he is
not.”
When these views are transferred to questions of political economy and
social organization, they lead to materialistic and utilitarian theories.
Society must be organized on the basis of positivism; the problem of the
future is how to give to the greatest number of individuals the best
opportunities of indulgence, the greatest amount of comfort, with the
least amount of pain. This is the greatest-happiness principle of Bentham
and Mill. Culture, of course, intellectual and æsthetic, as affording the
purest pleasure, must form a feature of this society; but its distinctive
characteristic is wealth, which is both the means and the opportunity of
indulgence.
“We constantly hear of the evils of wealth,” says Buckle, “and
of the sinfulness of loving money; although it is certain that,
after the love of knowledge, there is no one passion which has
done so much good to mankind as the love of money.”
“If we open our eyes,” says Strauss,[229] “and are honest
enough to avow what they show us, we must acknowledge that
the entire activity and aspiration of the civilized nations
of our time is based on views of life which run directly
counter to those entertained by Christ. The ratio of value
between the here and the hereafter is exactly reversed; and
this is by no means the result of the merely luxurious and
so-called materialistic tendencies of our age, nor even of its
marvellous progress in technical and industrial improvements.…
All that is best and happiest which has been achieved by us
has been attainable only on the basis of a conception which
regarded this present world as by no means despicable, but
rather as man’s proper field of labor, as the sum total of the
aims to which his efforts should be directed. If, from the
force of habit, a certain proportion of workers in this field
still carry the belief in an hereafter along with them, it
is nevertheless a mere shadow, which attends their footsteps
without exercising any determining influence on their actions.”
This is the cosmic religion, which is preached as “the new faith, the
religion of the future.” This world is all in all--let us make the most
of it; or, as the pagans of old put it: “Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die.”
In its essence it is sensualism; in its manifestations it will be refined
or coarse, according to the dispositions of the persons by whom it is
accepted. Now its worship will be accompanied with music and song and
dance; at other times it will sink to those orgies in which man becomes
only an unnatural animal.
Let us now turn to the Christian religion, and consider its teachings
in their bearing upon the subject we are discussing. They are the very
opposite of those which we have just read, and proceed from principles
which are in direct contradiction to the cosmic philosophy. God is the
highest, the Creator of all things, which are of value only as they
relate to him and are in harmony with the laws of his being. The earth
is but the threshold of heaven or of hell, as the case may be. This life
is a preparation for a future one, which is eternal; and all human
interests, whether individual or social, to be rightly understood, must
be viewed in their relation to this truth. Man is essentially a moral
being, and duty, which is often in conflict with pleasure, is his supreme
law. He is under the action of antagonistic forces; seeing the better
and approving it, he is drawn to love the worse and to do it. Thus
self-denial becomes the condition of virtue, and warfare with himself his
only assurance of victory.
“But he said to all: If any one wishes to come after me, let him deny
himself, take up his cross every day, and follow me.”
Wealth, which is the world’s great slave and idol, and universal
procurator of the senses, though in itself not evil, is yet a hindrance
to the highest spiritual life. “If thou wouldst be perfect, go sell what
thou hast, and give it to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in
heaven: and come and follow me.”
As duty is the supreme law of the individual, it follows that we must
seek the ideal of society in the moral order, to which all other social
interests should be made subservient, or else they will beget only an
unbounded and lawless activity. Even education is valuable only in so far
as it gives man a deeper sense of his responsibility to God, and enables
him more thoroughly to understand and perform his duty.
The social problem as between Christianity and modern paganism may
be stated in this way: is it the end of society to grow strong in
virtue through self-denial, or to increase indefinitely the means and
opportunity of indulgence? On which side is progress, on which decline?
We cannot now go farther into this subject, but before leaving it we
wish to quote the words of Fitzjames Stephen, who will hardly be called a
Christian, on modern progress.
“I suspect,” he says,[230] “that in many ways it has been
a progress from strength to weakness; that people are more
sensitive, less enterprising and ambitious, less earnestly
desirous to get what they want, and more afraid of pain, both
for themselves and others, than they used to be. If this should
be so, it appears to me that all other gains, whether in
wealth, knowledge, or humanity, afford no equivalent. Strength,
in all its forms, is life and manhood. To be less strong is
to be less a man, whatever else you may be. This suspicion
prevents me, for one, from feeling any enthusiasm about
progress, but I do not undertake to say it is well founded.… I
do not myself see that our mechanical inventions have increased
the general vigor of men’s characters, though they have no
doubt increased enormously our control over nature. The greater
part of our humanity appears to me to be a mere increase of
nervous sensibility in which I feel no satisfaction at all.”
The general superiority, and even the greater wealth, of Christian
nations as compared with others we would attribute, in great part at
least, to the influence of their religious faith, to which they owe their
sentiments on the dignity and sacredness of human nature in itself, apart
from surroundings; on the substantial equality of all men before God,
which tends to produce as its counterpart the equality of all before the
law, thus leading to the abolition of slavery, the elevation of woman,
and the protection of childhood. To it also they owe their ideas on the
family, which, in its constitutive Christian elements, lies at the very
foundation of our civilization. To Christianity they owe the principles
of universal charity and compassion, which have revolutionized the
relations of social life; and, finally, to it they are indebted for the
rehabilitation of labor, the chief source of wealth, which the pagan
nations looked upon as degrading.
“I cannot say,” writes Herodotus, “whether the Greeks get their contempt
for labor from the Egyptians; for I find the same prejudice among the
Thracians, the Scythians, the Persians, and the Lydians.”
“The Germans,” says Tacitus, “cannot bear to remain quiet, but they love
to be idle; they hold it base and unworthy of them to acquire by their
sweat what they can purchase with their blood.” In the same way the Gauls
looked upon labor with contempt.
We shall have to take up M. de Laveleye’s pamphlet again; for the present
we lay it aside with the following remark: If we should grant, to the
fullest, all that is here said about the greater wealth and material
prosperity of Protestant as compared with Catholic nations what are we
thence to conclude? Shall we say that the greed of gain which is so
marked a feature in the populations of England and the United States
is at once the result and proof of true Christian faith? May it not be
barely possible that the value of material progress is exaggerated? Is
there not danger lest, when man shall have made matter the willing slave
of all his passions, he should find that he has become the creature
of this slave? However this may be, might not a Catholic find some
consolation in the words of Holy Writ?
“And the angel that spoke in me, said to me: Cry thou, saying,
Thus saith the Lord of hosts: I am zealous for Jerusalem and
Sion with a great zeal. _And I am angry with a great anger with
the nations that are rich_; for I was angry a little, but they
helped forward the evil.”
TO BE CONTINUED.
ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,”
ETC.
CHAPTER XII.
THE BARONET IS RELIEVED.--A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY.
The night was wild and stormy. The wind had risen to a hurricane, and
drove the rain in Raymond’s face as he walked home through the park.
It was driving the grass in cold ripples over the fields, and tossing
the trees about as if it would break them. Columns of black clouds were
trooping over the sky, and the moon broke through them as if she were
pursued by the wind and flying for her life. Raymond was a long time
getting to the cottage. Great gusts swept up from the valley, staggering
him, so that he had to stand every now and then and cling to a tree until
it passed. Then the rain beat against his face so that he could hardly
profit by the fitful gleams of the moon as she dipped in and out of the
clouds. He was dripping wet when he got to his own door and let himself
in with his latch-key. He took off his coat, hanging it in the hall, and
lighted his candle. Franceline had left it close to his hand with a match.
Mechanically he walked up to his room and began to divest himself of his
drenched clothing. He hardly noticed that they were soaking and that he
was wet through; he was flushed and heated as if he had come straight
from a hot room. How the blast roared and shrieked, beating against the
cottage till it rocked like a ship at sea, and trying the windows till
they cracked and groaned! It whistled through the chinks so that the
flimsy red curtain fluttered as if the window had been open. Raymond
pushed it aside and opened the shutters, and looked out. The night was
inky black, above and below, except when a star flickered in and out like
a gas-jet swept by the wind, and showed the river like a bit of steel,
as it flashed and quivered under the pelting rain and hurried away into
blacker distance. All this angry roar was better than music to Raymond.
The fury of the elements seemed to comfort him. Nature was in sympathy
with him. It was kind of her to be angry and disturbed when he was so
distraught. Nature had more heart than his fellow-men. These were talking
over his despair quietly enough now--mocking him, very likely; but the
world around was shaken, and tossed, and driven in sympathy with him. A
great gust came swelling up from the river, growing louder and heavier
as it drew near, till, gathering itself up like a mountainous wave,
it burst with a crash against the cottage. M. de la Bourbonias leaped
back, and, with a sudden impulse of terror, flew out into the landing,
and knocked at Angélique’s door; but the sonorous breathing of the old
servant reassured him that all was right there and in the room beyond.
It was pitch dark, but the reflection from his own open door showed
Franceline’s standing wide open. He listened, but everything was silent
there. He stole noiselessly back to his room and closed the door, without
disturbing either of the sleepers.
The storm had reached its crisis, and gradually subsided after this,
until the wind was spent and died away in long, low wails behind the
woods, and the moon drifted above the tattered clouds that were sweeping
toward the east, leaving a portion of the sky stainless, with stars
flashing out brightly. Raymond put out his candle and went to bed.
Under ordinary circumstances he would probably have paid for the night’s
adventure by an attack of bronchitis or rheumatic fever; but the mental
fever that had been devouring him warded off every other, and when he
came down next morning he was neither ill nor ailing.
Franceline, like her _bonne_, had slept through the storm, and they were
quite astonished to hear what an awful night it had been, and to see the
fields strewn with great branches in every direction, gates torn up, and
other evidences of the night’s work. But they saw no traces of another
tempest that was raging still in a human soul close by them. Nothing
betrayed its existence, and they guessed nothing--so securely does this
living wall of flesh screen the secrets of the spirit from every outside
gaze! Passions rise up in hearts whose pulses we fondly imagine close
and familiar to us as our own, and the winds blow and the waves run high
and make wild havoc there, turning life into darkness and despair, or,
at the whisper of the Master’s voice, illuminating it as suddenly with a
flood of sunshine; and we are blind and deaf to these things, and remain
as “a stranger to our brother.” And mercifully so. Many a battle is won
that would have been lost if it had not been fought alone. We hinder each
other by our pity, perhaps, as often as we help.
* * * * *
Sir Simon had very little appetite for his breakfast when he came down
next morning, sick at heart after a sleepless night, and found the
pleasant meal thoughtfully spread in his favorite room, the library, with
the table wheeled close to his arm-chair on the right side of the hearth.
It all looked the very picture of comfort and refinement and elegance.
But the cup was doubly poisoned to him now; last night’s adventure had
added the last drop of bitterness to it. He could not think of Raymond
without a poignant pang. He suspected--and he was right--that Raymond
was thinking of him, wondering whether it was really all over with him
this time, and whether he was bankrupt and his estate in the fangs of
the creditors; and whether he was driving away from the Court never to
see it again; or whether once more, for the hundred and ninety-ninth
time, he had weathered the storm and was still afloat--even though on a
raft. Raymond would have scarcely believed it if any one had informed him
that he had been the instrument of destroying Sir Simon’s one chance of
escape; that he had snatched the last plank from him in his shipwreck.
It may have been an imaginary one, and Sir Simon, after the fashion of
drowning men, may have been catching at a straw; but now that it was
snatched from him, he was more than ever convinced that it had been a
solid plank which would have borne him securely to shore. He did not
ask himself whether Mr. Plover would have entered into his plans, and
whether, supposing he found it his interest to do so, his fortune would
have been equal to the demand; he only considered what might have been,
and what was not; and thinking of this, his indulgent pity for M. de la
Bourbonais shrank in the bitter reflection that he had ruined not only
himself but his friend irretrievably. They were pretty much in the same
boat now.
Sir Simon’s self-made delusions had cleared away wonderfully within
the last forty-eight hours. He drew no comparison to his own advantage
between Raymond’s actual position and his own. If M. de la Bourbonais
was a thief in the technical sense of the word, he, Sir Simon, was a
bankrupt; and a bankrupt, under certain conditions, may mean a swindler.
He had been a swindler for years; his life had been a sham these twenty
years, and he had not the excuse of circumstances to fall back on; he
had been dishonest from extravagance and sheer want of principle. “Take
it first and afford it afterwards” had been his theory, and he had lived
up to it, and now the day of reckoning had arrived. Many a time he had
said, half in jest, that Raymond was the richer man of the two. Raymond
used to laugh mildly at the notion, but it was true. An ambitious,
extravagant man and a contented poor one are pretty much on a level: the
one possesses everything he does not want; the other wants everything
he does not possess. The unprincipled spend-thrift and the high-minded,
struggling man were then on an equality of fortune, or rather the latter
was virtually the wealthier of the two. But now the distinction was
washed out. The proud consciousness of unstained honor and innermost
self-respect which had hitherto sustained M. de la Bourbonais and
sweetened the cup of poverty to him was gone. He was a blighted man, who
could never hold up his head again amongst his fellow-men.
“Good God! what delirium possessed him? How could he be so infatuated, so
stupid!” broke out Sir Simon, giving vent to what was passing through his
mind. “But,” he added presently, “he was not accountable. I believe grief
and anxiety drove him mad.” Then he recalled that answer of Raymond’s,
that had sounded so untrue at the time: “Yes, I can fancy myself giving
way, if the temptation took a certain form, and if I were left to my own
strength.” The words sounded now like a prophecy.
Of course we all know that, according to the canons of poetical justice,
the brave, suffering man should have been in some unexpected way succored
in his extremity; that some angel in visible or invisible form should
have been sent to hold him up from slipping into the pit that despair had
dug for him; and that, on the other hand, the wicked spendthrift should
have been left to eat the bread of righteous retribution, and suffer the
just penalty of his evil behavior. But poetical justice and the facts of
real life do not always agree.
Sir Simon, after walking up and down the library, chewing the cud of
bitter thoughts until he was sick of it, bethought himself that as
breakfast was there he might as well try and eat it before it got cold.
So he sat down and poured out his coffee, and then, by mere force of
habit, and without the faintest glimmer of interest, began to turn over
the bundle of letters piled up beside the _Times_ on the table. One
after another was tossed away contemptuously. The duns might cry till
they were hoarse now; he need not trouble about them; he would be at
least that much the gainer by his disgrace. Suddenly his eye lighted on
an envelope that was not addressed in the well-known hand of the race
of duns, but in Clide de Winton’s, and it bore the London postmark. The
thought of Clide generally produced on Sir Simon the effect of a needle
run through the left side; but he took up this letter with a strange
thrill of expectation. He opened it, and a change came over his face;
it was not joy--it was too uncertain, too tremulous yet for that. He
must read it again before he trusted to the first impression; he must
make sure that he was not dreaming, and the words that danced like a
will-o’-the-wisp before his eyes were real, written with real ink, on
real paper. At last he dropped the letter, and a heartier prayer than he
had uttered since his childhood came from him: “My God, I thank thee! I
have not deserved this mercy, but I will try to deserve it.”
He buried his face in his hands, and remained mute and motionless for
some minutes. Then, starting up as if suddenly remembering something, he
pulled out his watch. It wanted five minutes of ten. The law officer and
the Jew creditor were to start by the train that left Charing Cross at a
quarter past eleven. Sir Simon rang the bell sharply.
“Saddle a horse, and ride as fast as you can with this to the telegraph,”
he said to his valet, who answered the summons; “and the moment you come
back, get ready to be off with me to London by the mid-day train.”
The telegram prepared Mr. Simpson to see his client appear at his office
at two o’clock that afternoon, and, in obedience to its directions, the
Jew was there to meet him. Clide de Winton had seen Simpson the day
before, and given him full authority to settle the Dullerton debts so
as to set Sir Simon Harness free. He had only arrived in London that
very morning, and it was the merest accident that led him to call on
the family lawyer, who was also the family’s best friend, on his way
from the station to his hotel. Simpson was discretion itself, and one of
the attributes of that virtue is to know when to be indiscreet. Clide’s
first inquiry was for Sir Simon, with a view--which the astute lawyer
did not see through--of leading up to inquiries about other friends at
Dullerton; whereupon Mr. Simpson bolted out the whole truth, told him of
the baronet’s position, the long arrears of debt that had come against
him, and which were to culminate in bankruptcy within twenty-four hours.
It was as if the sky had fallen on Clide, or the ground opened under his
feet.
“Thank goodness I am come in time!” he exclaimed; and there and then sat
down and wrote to Sir Simon, telling him that proceedings were stopped,
and that he, Clide, took them in his own hands.
“And this is what you call being a friend!” said the young man, as he
and the baronet left Simpson’s office together, the one with a lightened
purse, the other with a heart considerably more so. “To think of your
letting things go to such lengths, and that if I had been a day later it
would have been all over!”
“My dear boy! what can I say to you? How can I ever repay you?”
“By forgiving me. I’ve lived long enough to find out a secret or two.
One is that it requires a very noble soul to forgive a man a money
obligation, and that there is a deal more generosity in accepting than
in conferring it. So if you don’t pick a quarrel with me after this, and
turn your back on me, we are quits. Is it a bargain?”
He held out his hand, laughing; Sir Simon wrung it till the pressure made
Clide wince. This was his only answer, and the only sentimental passage
the occasion gave rise to between them.
* * * * *
It was more than a month since Clide had left St. Petersburg, although
the season was still at its height there, and Isabel’s engagement was to
have lasted until the end of it. This had, however, been brought to an
abrupt and tragic close. She had acted for six weeks with unprecedented
success; every night was a fresh triumph, and nothing was talked of in
the _salons_ and clubs but the wonders of her voice, the intense reality
of her acting, and her rare beauty. Ophelia was considered her grandest
part. She was playing it one evening to a crowded house, in the presence
of the imperial family and the whole court, and seemed wrought up to a
pitch of power and pathos that surpassed her finest preceding efforts.
She was singing the mad scene with melting tenderness; the house was
breathless, hanging enraptured on every note, when suddenly the voice
ceased, the prima donna cast a wild look on every side of her, and then,
with a shriek too terribly real to be within the compass of art, she
flung her arms over her head, and, clasping her hands, fell insensible to
the ground. Never did any opera-house witness so dramatic a scene. The
spectators rose in a body from the pit to the gallery, shouting to know
what had happened, and calling for help. Help was near enough. A man in
plain clothes sprang from behind the scenes, and lifted the prostrate
Ophelia before any of the actors could interfere. There were several
medical men among the audience, and they rushed in a body to offer
their services. It was feared for a moment that she was dead; but the
doctors soon pronounced it to be only a swoon, though it was impossible
to say what might follow on the awakening. The emperor sent one of his
chamberlains to hear and see what was going on in the green-room, and
inquire if the piece was to be continued; whereupon the luckless manager
flew out before the footlights, and falling on his knees under the
imperial box, as if he saw the knout suspended over his shoulders, called
heaven to witness that he was a loyal subject and an innocent man, and
flung himself on the imperial clemency. The prima donna had been seized
with illness, and the opera could not be finished that night. The czar
waved his clemency to the terrified man, who withdrew, invoking all
manner of benedictions on the mercy of the Father of all the Russians,
and flew to hear what the doctors were now saying of Ophelia. They were
saying that she was acting out her part as it had never yet been acted,
with the perfection of nature--she was raving mad.
This was not proclaimed at once. The affair was hushed up for a few days,
and kept out of the newspapers, so that Clide only heard it accidentally
at the club, where he happened to lounge in a week after the occurrence.
He sent Stanton off at once to make inquiries at the house where Isabel
lodged. But they could tell nothing of her there; she had been taken away
the day after her seizure at the opera, and had left no address. Clide
went straight to the lawyer, and asked if there was no way of getting
access to her through the police; of learning at least whether she was
in an asylum; for his first idea on hearing that she had been taken away
was that they had placed her in some such confinement. The lawyer agreed
with him that this was most probable, but did not promise much help in
verifying the supposition. He seemed honestly willing to do what he could
in the matter, but repeated the old warning that little could be done
where imperial favor stood in the way. It was highly probable that the
czar would still show his benevolence toward the beautiful artist by
screening her hiding-place and the fact of her being mad, in hope of her
being able to return and complete her engagement after rest and medical
treatment.
His position now seemed worse to Clide than it had ever been. The thought
of Isabel’s being in a mad-house, a prey to the most awful visitation
that humanity is subject to, rudely, perhaps cruelly, treated by coarse,
pitiless menials, was so horrible that at first it haunted him till he
almost fancied he was going mad himself. The image of the bright young
creature who had first stirred the pulses of his foolish heart was for
ever before his eyes as she appeared to him that day--how long ago it
seemed!--in the midst of the splendors of Niagara, and that he took her
for a sprite--some lovely creature of the water and the sunlight. He
remembered, with a new sense of its meaning, the strange air she wore,
walking on as if half unconscious he had wondered if she were not walking
in her sleep. Was it a phase of the cruel malady that was then showing
itself? And if so, was she not, perhaps, blameless from the beginning?
This blight that had fallen on her in her brilliant maturity might have
been germinating then, making strange havoc in her mind, and impelling
her character, her destiny, to fearful and fantastic issues. Some weeks
passed while Clide was a prey to these harrowing thoughts, when he
received a letter from the lawyer, saying he had something to communicate
to him of interest.
“It is not good news,” he said, as the Englishman entered his office;
“but it is better than complete suspense. The signora is not in St.
Petersburg. All our researches were useless from the first, as she was
carried off almost immediately to a lunatic asylum in Saxony.”
“And she is there still?”
“Yes; and she has been admirably treated with the utmost skill and care,
so much so that it is expected she will be quite restored after a short
period of convalescence.”
“How did you ascertain all this?” inquired Clide.
“Through a client of mine who has been for some time a patient of the
establishment. He left it very recently, and came to see me on his
return, and in talking over the place and its inmates he described one
in a way that excited my suspicions. I wrote to the director, and put a
few questions cautiously, and the answer leaves me no doubt but that the
patient whom my client saw there a few days before his departure was the
lady who interests you.”
“Did you hear who accompanied her to Saxony?”
“My client saw a person walking in the grounds with her once, and
from the description it must be the same who travelled with her from
England--her uncle, in fact: a middle-sized man with coal-black hair and
very white teeth; ‘decidedly an unpleasant-looking person’ my client
called him.”
“Strange!” murmured Clide. “That description does not tally with my
recollection of the man who called himself her uncle, except that he had
a forbidding countenance and was of medium height. He had a quantity of
gray, almost white, hair, and not a sound tooth in his head.”
“Humph! White hair may turn black, and new teeth may be made to replace
lost ones,” observed the lawyer. “I would not be put off the scent by
changes of that sort, if the main points coincided.”
“Very true. I must start at once, then, for Saxony, and try and see
for myself. I shall have difficulty in gaining the confidence of the
directors of the place, I dare say. Can you help me by a letter of
introduction to any of them?”
“Yes; I am well known to the principal medical man by name, and I will
give you a line to him with pleasure.”
He wrote it, and shook hands with his client and wished him good-speed.
Clide travelled without halting till he drove up to the door of the
asylum. His letter procured him admittance at once to the private room
of the medical man, and, what was of greater importance, it inclined
the latter to credit his otherwise almost incredible story. When Clide
had told all he deemed necessary, the doctor informed him that the
patient whom he believed to be his wife had already left the house and
the country altogether; she had spent three full weeks under his care,
and was then well enough to be removed, and had, by his advice, been
taken home for the benefit of native air. It was just three days since
she had left Saxony. The doctor could give no idea as to where she had
gone, beyond that she had returned to England; he knew nothing of the
whereabouts of her native place there, and her uncle had left no clue to
his future residence.
Clide was once more baffled by fate, and found himself again in a
dead-lock. In answer to his inquiries concerning the nature of Isabel’s
disease, the medical man said that it was hereditary, and therefore
beyond the likelihood--not to say possibility--of radical cure. This, it
seemed, was the third attack from which she had suffered. The first was
in early girlhood, before the patient was eighteen; the second, somewhat
later and of much longer duration--it had lasted six years, her uncle
said; then came the third crisis, which, owing, perhaps, to the improved
general health of the patient, but more probably to the more judicious
and enlightened treatment she had met with, had passed off very rapidly.
It was, however, far from being a cure. It was at best but a recovery,
and the disease might at any moment show itself again in a more obstinate
and dangerous form. Perfect quiet, freedom from excitement, whether
mental or physical, were indispensable conditions for preserving her
against another crisis. It was needless to add after this that the career
of an actress was the most fatal one the unfortunate young woman could
have adopted. But in that, no doubt, she was more passive than active.
* * * * *
With this new light on his path, Clide hastened his return to England,
farther than ever, it seemed, from his journey’s end, and laden with a
heavier burden than when he set out. March! march! was still the command
that sounded in his ears, driving him on and on like the Wandering Jew,
and never letting him get nearer the goal.
He had not the faintest idea of Isabel’s native place. She had told him
she was Scotch, and her name said so too, though she was perfectly free
from the native accent which marked her uncle’s speech so strongly. But
what did that prove either way? Was Cameron her name, or Prendergast his?
He had taken a new name in his travels, and so had she. Still, feeble as
the thread was, it was the only one he had to guide him; so he started
for Scotland as soon as he landed in England, having previously taken the
precaution to acquaint the police in London with his present purpose,
and what had led him to it. If Isabel were sufficiently recovered to
appear again in public, it was probable that the brutal man--who was in
reality no more than her task-master--would have made some engagement for
her with a manager, and she might at this moment be singing her brain
away for his benefit in some provincial theatre. It was clear he shunned
the publicity of the London stage. Clide thought of these things as he
tramped over the purple heather of the Highlands, following now one
mirage, now another; and his heart swelled within him and smote him for
his angry and vindictive feelings toward Isabel; and tears, that were
no disgrace to his manhood, forced themselves from his eyes. Poor child!
She was not to blame, then, for wrecking his life, and coming again like
an evil genius to thrust him back into the abyss just as he had climbed
to safety, beckoned onwards and upwards by another angel form. She was a
victim herself, and had perhaps never meant to deceive or betray him, but
had loved him with her mad, untutored heart as well as she knew how.
The winter days dragged on drearily, as he went from place to place in
Scotland, and found no trace of the missing one, heard nothing that gave
him any hopes of finding her. The police were equally unsuccessful in
London. Stanton had gone back there, very much against his inclination;
but Clide insisted that he would be of more use in the busy streets,
keeping his keen eyes open, than following his master in his wanderings
up and down Scotland.
One dark afternoon the valet was walking along Regent Street, when he
stopped to look at some prints in a music-shop. The gas was lighted, and
streamed in a brilliant blaze over the gaudily-attired tenors and _prime
donne_ that were piling the agony on the backs of various operatic songs.
Stanton was considering them, and mentally commenting on the manner of
ladies and gentlemen who found it good to spend their lives making faces
and throwing themselves into contortions that appeared to him equally
painful and ridiculous, when he noticed a lady inside the shop engaged
in choosing some music. She was dressed in black, and he only caught
a glimpse of her side face through her veil; but the glimpse made him
start. He watched her take the roll of music from the shopman, secure it
in a little leathern case, and then turn to leave the shop. She walked
out leisurely, but the moment she opened the door she quickened her pace
almost to a run; and before Stanton knew where he was, she had rushed
into the middle of the street. He hastened after her, but a string of
carriages and cabs intervened and blocked the street for some moments.
As soon as it was clear, he saw the slight figure in black stepping into
an omnibus. He hailed it, gesticulating and hallooing frantically; but
the conductor, with the spirit of contradiction peculiar to conductors,
kept his head persistently turned the other way. Stanton tore after him,
waving his umbrella and whistling, all to no purpose, until at last he
stopped for want of breath. At the same moment the omnibus pulled up to
let some travellers alight; he overtook it this time, and got in. The
great machine went thundering on its way, and there opposite to him sat
the lady in black, his master’s wife, he was ready to swear, if she was
in the land of the living. He saw the features very indistinctly, but
well enough to be certain of their identity; the height and contour were
the same, and so was the mass of jet black hair that escaped in thick
plaits from under the small black bonnet. Then there was the conclusive
fact of his having seen her in a music-shop. This clinched the matter for
Stanton. The omnibus stopped, the lady got out, ran to the corner of the
street, and waited for another to come up, and jumped into it; Stanton
meanwhile following her like her shadow. She saw it, and he saw that she
saw it, and that she was frightened and trying to get away from him. Why
should she do so if she were not afraid of being recognized? He was
not a gentleman, and could see no reason for an unprotected young woman
being frightened at a man looking fixedly at her and pursuing her, unless
she had a guilty conscience. He sat as near as he could to her in the
omnibus, and when it pulled up to let her down he got down. She hurried
up a small, quiet street off Tottenham Court Road, and on reaching a
semi-detached small house, flew up the steps and pulled violently at the
bell. Stanton was beside her in an instant.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but I know you. I don’t mean to do you any ’arm, only
to tell you that I’m Stanton, Mr. Clide’s valet; you are my master’s
wife!”
He was excited, but respectful in his manner.
“You are mistaken,” replied the lady, shrinking into the doorway. “I know
nothing about you. I never heard of Mr. Clide, and I’m not married!”
Stanton was of course prepared for the denial, and showed no sign of
surprise or incredulity; but, in spite of himself, her tone of assurance
staggered him a little. He could not say whether the sound of the voice
resembled that of Mrs. de Winton. Its echoes had lingered very faintly in
his memory, and so many other voices and sounds had swept over it during
the intervening years that he could not the least affirm whether the
voice he had just heard was hers or not. Before he had found any answer
to this question, footsteps were audible pattering on the tarpauling of
the narrow entry, and a slip-shod servant-girl opened the door. The lady
passed quickly in; Stanton followed her.
“You must leave me!” she said, turning on him. “This is my papa’s house,
and if you give any more annoyance he will have you taken into custody.”
She spoke in a loud voice, and as she ceased the parlor door was opened,
and a gentleman in a velveteen coat and slippers came forward with a
newspaper in his hand.
“What’s the matter? What is all this about?” he demanded blandly, coming
forward to reconnoitre Stanton, who did not look at all bland, but grim
and resolute, like a man who had conquered his footing on the premises,
and meant to hold it.
“Sir, I am Stanton, Mr. Clide’s valet; this lady knows me well, if you
don’t.”
“Papa! I never saw him in my life! I don’t know who Mr. Clide is!”
protested the young lady in a tremor. “This man has annoyed me all the
way home. Send him away!”
“I must speak to you, sir,” said Stanton stoutly. “I cannot leave the
house without.”
“Pray walk in!” said the gentleman, waving his newspaper towards the open
parlor; “and you, my dear, go and take off your bonnet.”
“Now, sir, be good enough to state your business,” he began when the door
was closed.
“My business isn’t with you, sir, but with your daughter, if she is your
daughter,” said Stanton. “One thing is certain--she’s my master’s wife;
there an’t no use in her denying it, and the best thing she can do is
to speak out to her ’usband penitent-like, and he’ll forgive her, poor
thing, and do the best he can for her, which will be better than what
that uncle of hers ’as been doin’ for her, draggin’ her about everywhere
and driving the poor creature crazy. That’s what I’ve got to say, sir,
and I ’ope you’ll see as it’s sense and reason.”
The occupant of the velveteen slippers listened to this speech with eyes
that grew rounder and rounder as it proceeded; then he threw back his
head and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.
“My good man, there’s some mistake! You’ve mistaken my daughter for
somebody else; she never was married in her life, and she has no uncle
that ever I heard of. Ha! ha! ha! It’s the best joke I ever heard in my
life!”
“Excuse me; it an’t no joke at all!” protested Stanton, nettled, and
resolved not to be shaken by the ring of honesty there was in the man’s
laugh. “You mayn’t know the person that calls himself her uncle, but
I do, sir. Mayhap you are duped by the rascal yourself; but it’ll all
come out now. I have it all in the palm of my hand.” And he opened that
capacious member and closed it again significantly. “Your daughter must
either come away with me quietly, or I’ll call the police and have her
taken off whether she will or no!”
“I tell you, man, you are under some preposterous mistake,” said the
gentleman, his blandness all gone, and his choler rising. “My name is
Honey. I am a clerk in H---- Bank, and my daughter, Eliza Jane Honey, has
never left me since she was born. She is an artist, a singer, and gives
lessons in singing in some of the first houses in London!”
“Singer! Singing lessons! Ha! Just so! I know it all,” said Stanton, his
mouth compressing itself in a saturnine smile. “I know it all, and I tell
you I don’t leave this ’ouse without her.”
“Confound your insolence! What do you mean? You’d better be gone this
instant, or I’ll call the police and give _you_ into custody!
“No, sir, don’t try it; it won’t answer,” said Stanton, imperturbable.
“It ’ud only make more trouble; the poor thing has enough on her already,
and I’m not the one to make more for her. If you call in the police I’ve
something ’ere,” slapping his waistcoat pocket, “as ’ud settle at once
which of us was to be took up.”
Before Mr. Honey could say anything in answer to this, a voice came
carrolling down the stairs, singing some air from an opera, rich with
trills and _fioriture_.
“There it is! The very voice! The very tune I’ve ’eard her sing in the
drawing-room at Lanwold!” exclaimed Stanton.
The singer dashed into the room, but broke off in her trills on seeing
him.
“What! you are not gone? Papa, who is he?”
“My dear, he is either a madman or--or worse,” said her father. “It’s the
most extraordinary thing I ever heard in my life!”
“Speak out, ma’am, and don’t you fear I’ll do you any ’arm; my master
wouldn’t ’ave it, not for all the money he’s worth. Nobody knows the sum
he’s spent on them detectives already to try and catch you; and it speaks
badly for the lot to say they’ve not caught you long ago. But don’t you
be afraid of me, ma’am!” urged Stanton, making his voice as mild as he
could.
Eliza Jane’s answer was a peal of laughter.
“Why should I be afraid of you? I never laid my eyes on you before, or
you on me; you mistake me for somebody else, I tell you. I never heard
of Mr. Clide, and I am certain he never heard of me. The idea of your
insisting that I’m his wife!” And she laughed again; but there was a
nervous twitch about her mouth, and Stanton saw it.
“As like as two peas in a pod!” was his emphatic remark, as he
deliberately scanned her face.
There was no denying the resemblance, indeed. The face was fuller, the
features more developed, but the interval of years would explain that.
“Look at my hand! You see I have no wedding-ring? Ask me a few questions;
you will find out the blunder at once, if you only try,” she said.
Stanton paused for a moment, as if trying to recall something that might
serve as a test.
“I ’ave it!” he said, looking up with a look of triumph. “Open your
mouth, ma’am, and let me look into it!”
He advanced towards her, expecting instant compliance. But Miss Honey
rushed behind her father with a cry of terror and disgust. The movement
was perfectly natural under the circumstances, but Stanton saw it in the
light of his own suspicions.
“Ha! I guessed as much,” he said, drawing away, and speaking in a quiet
tone of regret. “I was sure of it. Well, you give me no choice. I know my
dooty to a lady, but I know my dooty to my master too.” He went toward
the window, intending to throw it up and call for a policeman.
“Stop!” cried Mr. Honey. “What do you expect to find in my daughter’s
mouth?”
“That, sir, is known to her and to me,” was the oracular reply. “If she
has nothing in it as can convict her, she needn’t be afraid to let me
look into it.”
Mr. Honey turned aside, touched his forehead with his forefinger, and
pointed with the thumb toward Stanton. After this rapid and significant
little pantomime, he said aloud to his daughter:
“My dear, perhaps it is as well to let the man have his way. He will see
that there is nothing to see. Come and gratify his singular curiosity.”
The girl was now too frightened to see the ludicrous side of the
performance; she advanced gravely to the table, on which a gas-burner
threw a strong, clear light, and opened her mouth. Stanton came and
peered into it. “Please to lift the left side as wide open as you can,
ma’am; it was the third tooth from the back of her left jaw.”
She did as he desired, but, after looking closely all round, he could
see nothing but two fine, pearly rows of teeth, all ivory, without the
smallest glimmer of gold or silver to attest the presence of even an
unsound one.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am! I beg a thousand pardons, sir! I find I’ve
made a great mistake! I’ve behaved shameful rude to you and the young
lady; but I hope you’ll forgive me. I was only doing my dooty to my
master. I’m sorrier than I can say for my mistake!” Both father and
daughter were too thankful to be rid of him to withhold their free and
unconditional pardon. They even went the length of regretting that he had
had so much trouble and such an unpleasant adventure all to no purpose,
and cordially wished him better success next time, as he withdrew,
profusely apologizing.
“Papa, he must be an escaped lunatic!” cried the young lady, as the
hall-door closed on Stanton.
“I dare say they took me for a maniac, and indeed no wonder!” was
Stanton’s reflection, as he heard a peal of laughter through the window.
The adventure left, nevertheless, an uneasy feeling on his mind, and
the next day he called on Mr. Peckitt, the dentist, and related it. Mr.
Peckitt had not seen the wearer of the silver tooth since the time he had
attended her before her departure for Berlin; but he had seen her uncle,
and made an entire set of false teeth for him. He took the liberty on
first seeing him of inquiring for the young lady; but her uncle answered
curtly that she was in no need of dental services at present, and turned
off the subject by some irrelevant remark. Mr. Peckitt, of course, took
the hint, and never reverted to it. This was all he had to tell Stanton;
but he did not confirm the valet’s certainty as to the non-identity of
Miss Honey on the grounds of the absence of the silver tooth. It was, he
thought, improbable that his patient should have parted with that odd
appendage, and that, if so, she should have gone to a strange dentist to
have it replaced by an ordinary tooth; but either of these alternatives
was possible.
This was all the information that Stanton had for his master when the
latter returned from his bootless search in Scotland.
On the following day Sir Simon Harness came to London and heard of the
strange adventure. He was inclined to attach more importance to it than
Clide apparently did.
“Suppose this so-called Eliza Jane Honey should not have been Isabel,”
he said, “but some one like her--the same whom you saw at Dieppe?” Clide
shook his head.
“Impossible! _I_ could not be deceived, though Stanton might. This Miss
Honey, too, was fuller in the face, and altogether a more robust person,
than Isabel, as Stanton remembers her. Now, after the terrible attack
that she has suffered lately, it is much more likely that she is worn and
thin, poor child!”
“That is true. Still, there remains the coincidence of the splendid voice
and of her being an artist. If I were you, I would not rest till I saw
her myself.”
“It would only make assurance doubly sure. Stanton has startled me
over and over again for nothing. Every pair of black eyes and bright
complexion that he sees gives him a turn, as he says, and sets him off
on the chase. No; the woman I saw at Dieppe was my wife--I am as sure
of that as of my own identity. I did not get near enough to her to say,
‘Are you my wife?’ but I am as certain of it as if I had.” He promised,
however, to satisfy Sir Simon, that he would go to Tottenham Court and
see Miss Honey.
While Clide’s tongue was engaged on this absorbing topic, he was mentally
reverting to another subject which was scarcely less absorbing, and which
was closer to his heart. His love for Franceline had not abated one atom
of its ardor since absence and a far more impassable gulf had parted him
from her; her image reigned supreme in his heart still, and accompanied
him in his waking and sleeping thoughts. He felt no compunction for this.
His conscience tendered full and unflinching allegiance to the letter of
the moral law, but it was in bondage to none of those finer spiritual
tenets that ruled and influenced Franceline. He would have cut off his
right hand rather than outrage her memory by so much as an unworthy
thought; but he gave his heart full freedom to retain and foster its
love for her. He had not her clear spiritual insight to discern the
sinfulness of this, any more than he had her deep inward strength to
enable him to crush the sin out of his heart, even if he had tried, which
he did not. It was his misfortune, not his fault, that his love for her
was unlawful. Nothing could make it guilty; that was in his own power,
and the purity of its object was its best protection. She was an angel,
and could only be worshipped with the reverent love that one of her own
pure kindred spirits might accept without offence or contamination. Such
was Clide’s code, and, if he wanted any internal proof of his own loyalty
to sanction it, he had it in the shape of many deep-drawn sighs--prayers,
he called them, and perhaps they were--that Franceline might not suffer
on his account, but might forget him, and be happy after a time with some
worthier husband. He had been quite honest when he sighed these sighs--at
least he thought he was; yet when Sir Simon, meaning to console him and
make things smooth and comfortable, assured him emphatically that they
had been both happily mistaken in the nature of Franceline’s feelings,
and then basely and cruelly insinuated that Ponsonby Anwyll was in a
fair way to make her a good husband by and by, Clide felt a pang more
acute than any he had yet experienced. This is often the case with us. We
never know how much insincerity there is in the best of our prayers--the
anti-self ones--until we are threatened with the grant of them.
Sir Simon said nothing about the stolen ring. His friendship for Raymond
partook of that strong personal feeling which made any dishonor in its
object touch him like a personal stain. He could not bear even to admit
it to himself that his ideal was destroyed. M. de la Bourbonais had been
his ideal of truth, of manly independence, of everything that was noble,
simple, and good. There are many intervals in the scale that separates
the ordinary honest man from the ideal man of honor. Sir Simon could
count several of the former class; but he knew but one of the higher
type. He had never known any one whom he would have placed on the same
pinnacle of unsullied, impregnable honor with Raymond. Now that he had
fallen, it seemed as if the very stronghold of Sir Simon’s own faith had
surrendered; he could disbelieve everything, he could doubt everybody.
Where was truth to be found, who was to be trusted, since Raymond de la
Bourbonais had failed? But meantime he would screen him as long as he
could. He would not be the first to speak of his disgrace to any one. He
told Clide how Raymond had lost, for him, a considerable sum of money
recently, through the dishonesty of a bank, and how he had borne the loss
with the most incredible philosophy, because just then it so happened he
did not want the money; but since then Franceline’s health had become
very delicate, and she was ordered to a warm climate, and these few
hundreds would have enabled him to take her there, and her father was now
bitterly lamenting the loss.
Clide was all excitement in a moment.
“But now you can supply them?” he cried. “Or rather let me do it through
you! I must not, of course, appear; but it will be something to know I am
of use to her--to both of them. You can easily manage it, can you not?
M. de la Bourbonais would make no difficulty in accepting the service
from you.”
“Humph! As ill-luck will have it, there is a coldness between us at
present,” said Sir Simon--“a little tiff that will blow off after a while
but meanwhile Bourbonais is as unapproachable as a porcupine. He’s as
proud as Lucifer at any time, and I fear there is no one but myself from
whom he would accept a service of the kind.”
“Could not Langrove manage it? They seemed on affectionate terms,” said
Clide.
“Oh! no, oh! no. That would never do!” said Sir Simon quickly. “I don’t
see any one at Dullerton but myself who could attempt it.”
“Well, but some one must, since you say you can’t,” argued Clide with
impatience. “When do you return to the Court?”
“I did not mean to return just yet a while. You see, I have a great deal
of business to look to--of a pleasant sort, thanks to you, my dear boy,
but still imperative and admitting of no delay. I can’t possibly leave
town until it has been settled.”
“I should have thought Simpson might have attended to it. I suppose you
mean legal matters?” said the young man with some asperity. He could not
understand Sir Simon’s being hindered by mere business from sparing a day
in a case of such emergency, and for such a friend. It was unlike him to
be selfish, and this was downright heartlessness.
“Simpson? To be sure!” exclaimed the baronet jubilantly, starting up and
seizing his hat. “I will be off and see him this minute. Simpson is sure
to hit on some device; he’s never at a loss for anything.”
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE STORY OF EVANGELINE IN PROSE.
I spare you M. Jourdain’s oft-quoted saying. Too often, I fear, I
successfully imitate the “Bourgeois Gentilhomme” in speaking prose
without knowing it--aye, at the very moment when I think to woo the Muse
most ardently. But great is the courage demanded to announce a purpose
to be prosaic--prosy, it may be--with premeditation. Especially true is
this when, as in the case before me, the subject itself ranks high as
poetry. Mr. Longfellow, in some of his later writings, may seem to aim
at, or does, perhaps, unconsciously catch, that tone, made fashionable
by the younger Victorian songsters, which sets the poet apart as a being
differing from his kind, and makes him, as the English poet-laureate
does, “born in a golden clime”
“With golden stars above.”
But in his “Tale of Acadie” our American Wordsworth touches with
sympathetic finger the chords that vibrate with feeling in common hearts.
This is the lyre he sweeps with a magic sweetness not excelled by any
modern English poet. _Evangeline_ is a poem of the hearth and domestic
love. That is to say, though it is true the heroine and her betrothed
never come together in one happy home, the feelings described are such as
might without shame beat tenderly in any Christian maiden’s breast; such,
too, as any husband might wish his wife to feel. How different is this
from the fierce passion--a surrender to the lower nature--which burns
and writhes and contorts itself in Mr. Swinburne’s heroines! One is
Christian Love, the other the pagan brutishness of Juvenal’s Messalina.
It may be said indeed with truth that, in portraying a Catholic maiden
and a Catholic community, Mr. Longfellow has, with the intuition of
genius, reflected in this poem the purity and fidelity blessed by the
church in the love it sanctions. His admirers, therefore, cannot but
regret that debasing contact with the new school of the XIXth-century
realism which, in such an one of his later poems, for example, as that
entitled “Love,” draws him to the worship of the “languors” and “kisses”
of the Lucretian Venus. The love of Evangeline is that which is affected
by refined women in every society--humble though the poet’s heroine be;
the other strips the veil from woman’s weakness.
The charm of the poem is that it transports us to a scene Arcadian,
idyllic, yet which impresses us with its truthfulness to nature. This
is not Acadia only, but Arcadia. The nymphs, and the shepherds and
shepherdesses, and the god Pan with his oaten reed, put off the stage
costumes worn by them in the pages of Virgil or on the canvas of
Watteau, and, lo! here they are in real life in the village of Grand
Pré--Evangeline milking the kine, Gabriel Lajeunesse, and Michael the
fiddler, and the level Acadian meadows walled in by their dykes from
the turmoil of war that shook the world all around them. The picture is
truthful; but truthful rather by the effect of the bold touches that
befit the artist and poet than in the multitude of details--some more
prosaic, some not so charming--which, massed together, make up the more
faithful portrait of the historian. The description of scenery in the
poem confuses the natural features of two widely-separated and different
sections of the country; the Evangeline of Grand Pré is not in all
respects the Acadian girl of Charlevoix or Murdock; the history of men
and manners on the shores of the Basin of Mines,[231] as depicted by
the poet, is sadly at variance with the angry, tumultuous, suspicious,
blood-stained annals of those settlements. Strange as it may seem, the
poem is truer of the Acadians of to-day, again living in Nova Scotia,
than of their expatriated forefathers. Remoteness of time did not mean,
in their case, a golden age of peace and plenty. Far from it! It meant
ceaseless war on the borders, the threats and intrigues of a deadly
national feud, the ever-present, overhanging doom of exile, military
tyranny, and constant English espionage. Now absolute peace reigns within
the townships still peopled by their descendants, and the Acadian peasant
and village maiden cling in silence and undisturbed to the manners their
fathers brought from Normandy nearly three centuries ago.
The first few lines give the coloring to the whole poem. They are the
setting within which are grouped the characters.
“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,”
stand “like Druids of eld,” or “harpers hoar”;
“While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.”
This is the refrain running through the poem like the _aria_ of the
“Last Rose of Summer” through _Martha_. Yet the picture conveyed to the
reader’s mind is that of the Atlantic coast of Acadia, or Nova Scotia,
not of the Basin of Mines, where Evangeline dwelt with her people. The
natural features of the two sections of country are strikingly diverse.
On the east coast of Nova Scotia rises a line of granitic and other
cliffs, sterile, vast, jagged, opposing their giant shoulders to the
roaring surges of the Atlantic. On the hills behind, the pines and
hemlocks rustle and murmur in answer to the waves. This is the “forest
primeval” and the “loud-voiced neighboring ocean.” But on the west coast
is quite another scene. The Basin of Mines is an inland gulf of an inland
sea--the Bay of Fundy. Here the granite rocks and murmuring pines give
place to red clay-banks and overflowed marshes. And here is Horton, or
Grand Pré. It is separated by the whole breadth of the peninsula of Nova
Scotia from the ocean. The “mists from the mighty Atlantic,” which
“Looked on the happy valley, but ne’er from their station descended,”
are in reality the fogs of the Bay of Fundy shut out by the North
Mountain. Instead of the long swell of the Atlantic breaking on a rocky
coast, we have in the Basin of Mines numerous small rivers running
through an alluvial country, with high clay-banks left bare by the
receding tide. This last feature of the scene is correctly described
by the poet; but it must be borne in mind that it is not united with
the natural features of the east coast. The Acadians never, in fact,
affected the Atlantic sea-board. They sailed shuddering past its frowning
and wintry walls, and, doubling Cape Sable, beat up the Bay of Fundy to
where the sheltered Basins of Port Royal and Mines invited an entrance
from the west. For over one hundred years after the founding of Port
Royal the Atlantic coast of Acadia remained a waste. A fishing-village
at Canseau on the north--a sort of stepping-stone to and from the great
fortress of Louisburg--and a few scattered houses and clearings near
La Tour’s first settlement alone broke the monotonous silence of the
wilderness. The Indian hunter tracking the moose over the frozen surface
of the snow, and some half-solitary Irish and New England fishermen in
Chebucto Bay, divided the rest of the country between them. It was not
until 1749 that Cornwallis landed his colonists at Halifax, and made
the first solid footing on the Atlantic coast. But for generations
previously, in the rich valley of the River of Port Royal, and along
the fertile banks of the streams flowing into the Basin of Mines--the
Gaspereau, the Canard, and the Pereau--the thrifty Acadians spread their
villages, built their churches, and were married and buried by the good
Recollect Fathers.
I was a lad scarce emancipated from college when I first visited those
scenes. I remember well my emotion when I drew my eyes away from the
landscape, and, turning to my companion, Father K----, asked him if
there were any remains of the old village of Grand Pré. To my youthful
imagination Evangeline was as real as the people about me. Father K----
was the priest stationed at Kentville, about ten miles distant from
Grand Pré and the Gaspereau River, which were included in his mission. He
was an old family friend, and I was going to spend the summer vacation
with him. We were driving from Windsor through Horton and Wolfville to
Kentville, passing on our road through all the scenes described in the
poem. I have often visited that part of the country since then, but never
has it made such an impression on me. The stage-coach then rolled between
Windsor and Kentville, and something of the rural simplicity congenial
with the poem was still felt to be around one. Last year I rode by rail
over the same ground, and later on another line of railroad to Truro, and
thence around the Basin of Mines on the north through Cumberland. But my
feelings had changed, or the whistle of the locomotive was a sound alien
to the memories of those green meadows and intersecting dykes. Evangeline
was no longer a being to be loved, but a beautiful figment of the poet’s
brain.
I don’t know to this day whether Father K---- was quizzing me, or was
loath to shatter my boyish romance, when he told me that there were some
old ruins which were said to be the home of Evangeline. It is probable he
was having a quiet joke at my expense, as he was noted for his fund of
humor, which I learned better to appreciate in later years. Poor Father
K----! He was a splendid type of the old Irish missionary priest--an
admirable Latinist; well read in English literature, especially the Queen
Anne poets; hearty, jovial, and could tell a story that would set the
table in a roar. And, withal, no priest worked harder than he did in his
wide and laborious mission, or was a more tender-hearted friend of the
poor and afflicted. He is since dead.
During the month or six weeks I spent with Father K----, that part of the
country became quite familiar to me by means of his numerous drives on
parish duties, when I usually accompanied him. Often, as the shades of
the summer evening descended, have I watched the mists across the Basin
shrouding the bluff front of Cape Blomidon--“Blow-me-down,” as it is more
commonly called by the country-folk. At other times we drove up the North
Mountain, where the
“Sea-fogs pitched their tents,”
and, standing there, I have looked down upon the distant glittering
waters of the Bay of Fundy.
On one occasion we rode over from Kentville to Wolfville, and then up the
Gaspereau, at the mouth of which
“The English ships at their anchors”
swung with the tide on the morning which ushered in the doom of Grand
Pré. We rode some distance up the valley to the house of a Catholic
farmer, and there put up for the day. It was the day on which the
elections took place for the House of Assembly. The contest was fiercely
conducted amid great popular excitement. One of those “No-Popery” cries,
fomented by an artful politician--which sometimes sweep the colonies as
well as the mother country--was raging in the province. Father K----
left Kentville, the county town, on that day to avoid all appearance
of interference in the election, and also to get away from the noise
and confusion that pervaded the long main street of the village. I can
remember the news coming up the Gaspereau in the evening how every one
of the four candidates opposed to Father K---- had been returned.
But at that time I paid little heed to politics, and during the day I
wandered down through the field to the river, and strolled along its
willow-fringed banks. Some of those willows were very aged, and might
have swung their long, slim wands and narrow-pointed leaves over an
Evangeline and a Gabriel a hundred years before. Those willows were not
the natural growth of the forest, but were planted there--by whom? No
remnant of the people that first tilled the valley was left to say!
Riding home next day, a laughable incident, but doubtless somewhat
annoying to Father K----, occurred. Just as we were about to turn a
narrow bend of the road, suddenly we were confronted by a long procession
in carriages and all sorts of country vehicles, with banners flying, men
shouting, and everything to indicate a triumphal parade. It was, in fact,
a procession escorting two of the “No-Popery” members elected the day
before. The position was truly rueful, but Father K---- had to grin and
bear it. There was no escape for us; we had to draw up at the side of the
road, and sit quietly in our single wagon until the procession passed us.
It was a very orderly and good-humored crowd, but there were a good many
broad grins, as they rode by, at having caught the portly and generally
popular priest in such a trap. Nothing would persuade them, of course,
but that he had been working might and main for the other side during
the election. Finally, as the tail of the procession passed us, some one
in the rear, more in humor than in malice, sang out: “To h--ll with the
Pope.” There was a roar of laughter at this, during which Father K----
gathered up his reins, and, saying something under his breath which I
will not vouch for as strictly a blessing, applied the whip to old Dobbin
with an energy that that respectable quadruped must have thought demanded
explanation.
Changed indeed was such a scene from those daily witnessed when Father
Felician,
“Priest and pedagogue both in the village,”
ruled over his peaceful congregation at the mouth of the Gaspereau.
It has been said in the beginning of this article that Evangeline, the
heroine and central figure of the poem, is not altogether true to history
as typical of the Acadian girl of that period, as seen in the annals of
Port Royal; and doubtless this assertion can be borne out by the records.
But, on second thoughts, it does appear, as it were, a profanation to
subject such a bright creation of the poet’s mind to the analysis of
history. As profitably might we set about converting the diamond into
its original carbon. The magical chemistry of genius, as of nature, has
in either case fused the dull and common atoms into the sparkling and
priceless jewel.
The stoutest champion of her sex will not, upon consideration, contend
that so absolutely perfect a creature as Evangeline is likely to be found
in any possible phase of society. Is not a spice of coquetry inseparable
from all women? Evangeline has none of it. She is, too, too unconscious
that her lover
“Watches for the gleam of her lamp and her shadow”
under the trees in the orchard. She is the heroine of an idyl--not,
indeed, of unreal Arthurian romance, but of that exalted and passionless
love which the virgin heart seeks, but afterwards consoles itself for not
finding. That ideal star does not shine upon this world; but its divine
rays fall softly upon many an unknown heart in the cloister.
But it is incontestable that the Acadian maidens of Port Royal and Mines
shared in some of the agreeable frivolities which still, it is said,
sometimes distinguish their sisters in the world. They had an eye for a
military uniform and clanking spurs even in those “primeval” days. It
is a frequent complaint of the French governors to the home authorities
at Paris that their young officers were being continually led into
marriage with girls of the country “without birth,” and, worse still,
often “without money.” In the old parish register of Annapolis can be
seen more than one entry of the union of a gallant ensign or captain to
a village belle from the inland settlements whose visit to the Acadian
metropolis had subjugated the Gallic son of Mars. Nor was the goddess of
fashion altogether without a shrine in close contiguity to the “murmuring
pines and the hemlocks.” Some of the naval and military officers sent for
their wives from Paris or Quebec, and these fine ladies brought their
maids with them. This is not a supposition, but a fact which can be
verified by reference to the letters of M. des Goutins and others in the
correspondence of the time. Imagine a Parisian soubrette of the XVIIIth
century in the village of Grand Pré! It is a shock to those who derive
their knowledge of Acadie from Mr. Longfellow’s poem; but those who
are familiar with the voluminous records of the day, preserved in the
provincial archives, are aware of a good many stranger things than that
related in them. Since _Evangeline_ was published the Canadian and Nova
Scotian governments have done much to collect and edit their records, and
they are now accessible to the student. Rightly understood, there is no
reason why the flood of light thus thrown upon the lives of the Acadians
should detract anything from our admiration for that simple and kindly
race. They were not faultless; but the very fact that they shared in the
common interests, and even foibles, of the rest of the world gives that
tone of reality to their history which makes us sympathize with them more
justly in the cruel fate that overtook them. Yet, in depicting the young
Acadian girl of that period as he has done, the poet has but idealized
the truth. The march of the history of her people aids him in making the
portrait a faithful one. Had he placed the time a little earlier--that is
to say, under the French-Acadian _régime_--and his heroine at Annapolis,
his poem could not have borne the criticism of later research. But in
selecting the most dramatic incident of Acadian history as the central
point of interest, he has necessarily shifted the scene to one of the
Neutral French settlements. Here, too, he is aided in maintaining the
truthfulness of his portraiture by the fact that the English conquest,
in depriving the Acadians of the right of political action, and cutting
them off as much as possible from intercourse with Canada and France,
had thrown them back upon rural occupations alone, and developed their
simple virtues. Mines and Chignecto had been noted for their rustic
independence and their manners uncorrupted by contact with the world,
even under the old _régime_. One of the military governors of Port Royal
complains of them as “semi-republicans” in a letter to the Minister of
Marine and Colonies at Paris. After the conquest of 1710, intercourse
with Annapolis and its English Government House and foreign garrison
became even more restricted. No oath of allegiance being taken to the
new government, the _curé_ was recognized both by the inhabitants and
the Annapolis government as their virtual ruler. Under the mild sway
of Fathers Felix, Godalie, and Miniac--in turn _curés_ of Mines--the
Acadians sought to forget in the cultivation of their fields the stern
military surveillance of Annapolis, and, later, Fort Edwards and Fort
Lawrence. Father Miniac comes latest in time, and shared the misfortunes
of his flock in their expulsion. But in Father Godalie, the accomplished
scholar and long-loved friend of the people of Grand Pré, we seem best
to recognize the “Father Felician” of Mr. Longfellow’s poem. He was a
guide well fitted to form the lovely character of Evangeline; nor do the
authentic records of the time bear less ample testimony to the virtue of
his people than the glowing imagination of the poet.
It is less in the delineation of individual character than in its
description of the undisturbed peace reigning at Grand Pré that the poem
departs most from the truth of history. The expulsion of 1755 was not a
thunderbolt in a clear sky descending upon a garden of Eden. It was a
doom known to be hanging over them for forty years. Its shadow, more
or less threatening for two generations, was present in every Acadian
household, disabling industry and driving the young men into service or
correspondence with their French compatriots. Space would not permit, in
so short a paper, to enter into the history of that desperate struggle
for supremacy on this continent ending on the heights of Abraham,
isolated chapters of which have been narrated with a graphic pen by Mr.
Francis Parkman. Acadie was one of its chosen battlegrounds. So far
from the Acadians living in rural peace and content, it may be said
broadly yet accurately that from the date of their first settlement to
their final expulsion from the country, during a period extending over
one hundred and fifty years, five years had never passed consecutively
without hostilities, open or threatened. The province changed masters,
or was wholly or partially conquered, seven times in a little over one
hundred years, and the final English conquest, so far from establishing
peace, left the Acadians in a worse position than before. They refused
to take the oath of allegiance to the English government; the French
government was not able to protect them, though it used them to harass
the English.
They acquired, therefore, by a sort of tacit understanding, the title
and position of the “Neutral French,” the English government simply
waiting from year to year until it felt itself strong enough to remove
them _en masse_ from the province, and the Acadians yearly expecting
succor from Quebec or Louisburg. Each party regarded the other as aliens
and enemies. Hence it is that no French-Acadian would ever have used the
words “his majesty’s mandate”--applied to George II.--as spoken by Basil
the blacksmith in the poem. That single expression conveys a radically
false impression of the feelings of the people at the time. The church at
Mines, or Grand Pré, from the belfry of which
“Softly the Angelus sounded,”
had been burned down twice by the English and its altar vessels stolen by
Col. Church in the old wars. Nor had permanent conquest, as we have said,
brought any change for the better. The _curés_ were frequently imprisoned
on pretext of exciting attacks on the English garrisons, and sometimes,
as in the case of Father Felix and Father Charlemagne, were exiled from
the province. In 1714 the intention was first announced of transporting
all the Acadians from their homes. It was proposed to remove them to Cape
Breton, still held by the French. The pathetic remonstrance of Father
Felix Palm, the _curé_ of Grand Pré, in a letter and petition to the
governor, averted this great calamity from his people at that time. But
the project was again revived by the English Board of Trade, 1720-30. In
pursuance of its orders, Gov. Philipps issued a proclamation commanding
the people of Mines to come in and take the oath of allegiance by a
certain day, or to depart forthwith out of the province, permitting, at
the same time--a stretch of generosity which will hardly be appreciated
at this day--each family to carry away with it “two sheep,” but all the
rest of their property to be confiscated. This storm also blew over. But
the result of this continual harassment and threatening was to drive the
Acadians into closer correspondence with the French at Louisburg, and
to cause their young men to enlist in the French-Canadian forces on the
frontier. In view of this aid and comfort given to the enemy, and their
persistent refusal to take the oath of allegiance, later English writers
have not hesitated to declare the removal of the Acadians from the
province a political and military necessity. But the otherwise unanimous
voice of humanity has unequivocally denounced their wholesale deportation
as one of the most cruel and tyrannical acts in the colonial history of
England. We are not to suppose, however, that the Acadians folded their
hands while utter ruin was thus threatening them. In 1747 they joined
in the attack on Col. Noble’s force at Mines, in which one hundred
of the English were killed and wounded, and the rest of his command
made prisoners. They were accused, not without some show of reason, of
supporting the Indians in their attack on the new settlement at Halifax.
It is admitted that three hundred of them, including many of the young
men from Grand Pré, were among the prisoners taken at Fort Beau Sejour
on the border a few months before their expulsion. It is not our purpose
to enter into any defence or condemnation of those hostilities. But it
is plain that Mr. Longfellow’s beautiful lines describing the columns of
pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense, ascending
“From a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment,”
“free from fear, that reigns with the tyrant, or envy, the vice of
republics,” were not applicable to the condition of affairs at Grand Pré
in 1755, nor at any time.
The poem follows with fidelity the outlines of the scenes of the
expulsion. Heart-rending indeed is the scene, as described even by those
who were agents in its execution. The poet gives almost _verbatim_ the
address of Col. John Winslow in the chapel. Nevertheless one important
clause is omitted. Barbarous as were the orders of Gov. Lawrence, he
was not absolutely devoid of humanity. Some attempt was made to lessen
the pangs of separation from their country by the issuing of orders
to the military commanders that “whole families should go together on
the same transport.” These orders were communicated with the others to
the inhabitants by Col. Winslow, and it appears, they were faithfully
executed as far as the haste of embarkation would permit. But as the
young men marched separately to the ships, and some of them escaped for
a time into the woods, there was nothing to prevent such an incident
occurring as the separation of Evangeline and Gabriel.
About seven thousand (7,000) Acadians, according to Gov. Lawrence’s
letter to Col. Winslow, were transported from their homes. The total
number of these unfortunate people in the province at that time has
been estimated at eighteen thousand. The destruction was more complete
at Grand Pré than elsewhere, that being the oldest settlement, with the
exception of Annapolis, and the most prosperous and thickly settled. A
few years later another attempt was made to transfer the remainder of the
Acadian population to New England; but the transports were not permitted
to land them at Boston, as they were completely destitute, and the New
England commonwealths petitioned against being made responsible for their
support. The Acadian exiles were scattered over Pennsylvania, Virginia,
and Georgia. About four hundred and fifty were landed at Philadelphia.
“In that delightful land which is washed by the Delaware’s waters,
Guarding in sylvan shades the name of Penn, the apostle,
Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream the city he founded.
…
There from the troubled sea had Evangeline landed, an exile,
Finding among the children of Penn a home and a country.”
A few months ago I visited the Quaker City. There, where Evangeline ended
her long pilgrimage, I took up the thread of that story the early scenes
of which had been so familiar to me. How different those around me! Gone
were the balsamic odors of the pines and the salt spray of the ocean.
One can conceive how the hearts of the poor Acadian exiles must have
trembled. I sought out the old “Swedish church at Wicaco,” whence the
“sounds of psalms
“Across the meadows were wafted”
on the Sabbath morning when Evangeline went on her way to the hospital,
and there found her lover dying unknown. The quaint little church--not
larger than a country school-house--built of red and black bricks brought
from Sweden, is now almost lost in a corner near the river’s edge, in
the midst of huge warehouses and intersecting railroad tracks. In the
wall near the minister’s desk is a tablet in memory of the first pastor
and his wife buried beneath. Fastened to the gallery of the choir--not
much higher than one’s head--is the old Swedish Bible first used in
the church, and over it two gilded wooden cherubs--also brought from
Sweden--that make one smile at their comical features. In the churchyard,
under the blue and faded gray tombstones, repose the men and women of
the congregation of 1755 and years before. But no vestiges of the Acadian
wanderers remain in the Catholic burying-ground.
“Side by side in their nameless graves the lovers are sleeping.
Under the humble walls of the little Catholic churchyard,
In the heart of the city, they lie unknown and unnoticed.”
Many of the Acadians succeeded in wandering back to their country. Others
escaped into what is now called New Brunswick, which was then a part of
Acadia, and either returned to Nova Scotia in after-years when the whole
of Canada was finally ceded to the English, or founded settlements,
existing to this day in New Brunswick, and returning their own members
to the Provincial Parliaments. The descendants of the Acadians, still
speaking the French language and retaining the manners of their
forefathers, are more numerous than is generally supposed in Nova Scotia.
They number thirty-two thousand out of a total population of three
hundred and eighty-seven thousand (387,000), according to the census of
1871. The poet says:
“Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic
Linger a few Acadian peasants.…
Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,
And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline’s story.”
This refers, no doubt, to the settlement at Chezzetcook, which, from its
closeness to Halifax, is best known. On Saturday mornings, in the market
at Halifax, the Acadian women can be seen standing with their baskets of
eggs and woollen mitts and socks for sale. They are at once recognized by
their short blue woollen outer petticoats or kirtles, and their little
caps, with their black hair drawn tightly up from the forehead under
them. The young girls are often very pretty. They have delicate features,
an oval face, a clear olive complexion, and eyes dark and shy, like a
fawn’s. They soon fade, and get a weather-beaten and hard expression from
exposure to the climate on their long journeys on foot and from severe
toil.
But in Yarmouth County, and on the other side of the peninsula in
the township of Clare, Digby County, there are much larger and more
prosperous settlements. Clare is almost exclusively French-Acadian.
The people generally send their own member to the provincial House
of Assembly. He speaks French more fluently than English. The priest
preaches in French. Here at this day is to be found the counterpart of
the manners of Grand Pré. Virtue, peace, and happiness reign in more
than “a hundred homes” under the old customs. Maidens as pure and sweet
as Evangeline can be seen as of old walking down the road to the church
on a Sunday morning with their “chaplet of beads and their missal.” But
the modern dressmaker and milliner has made more headway than among the
poor Chezzetcook people. Grand Pré itself, and most of the old Acadian
settlements, are inhabited by a purely British race--descendants of the
North of Ireland and New England settlers who received grants of the
confiscated lands. By a singular turn of fortune’s wheel the descendants
of another expatriated race--the American loyalists--now people a large
part of the province once held by the exiled Acadians.
THE PATIENT CHURCH.
Bide thou thy time!
Watch with meek eyes the race of pride and crime,
Sit in the gate, and be the heathen’s jest,
Smiling and self-possest.
O thou, to whom is pledged a victor’s sway,
Bide thou the victor’s day!
Think on the sin
That reap’d the unripe seed, and toil’d to win
Foul history-marks at Bethel and at Dan--
No blessing, but a ban;
Whilst the wise Shepherd hid his heaven-told fate,
Nor reck’d a tyrant’s hate.
Such loss is gain;
Wait the bright Advent that shall loose thy chain!
E’en now the shadows break, and gleams divine
Edge the dim, distant line.
When thrones are trembling, and earth’s fat ones quail,
True seed! thou shalt prevail.
--NEWMAN.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._
FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
IV.
William du Bellay having remained in France, M. de Vaux had been sent to
replace him in England. The latter, having but recently returned from
Rome, where he was attached to the embassy of M. de Grammont, French
ambassador to that court, was not yet initiated into the state of affairs
as they existed at the court of Henry VIII.
Du Bellay was not satisfied with the change; and the old diplomate,
finding his new assistant inclined to be somewhat dull, undertook to
enlighten him--leading him on step by step into the intricacies of
diplomacy, like a mother, or rather a governess, a little brusque, who is
impatient at the slow progress the child makes in learning to walk.
“Come!” he exclaimed, “I see you understand nothing of this; so I shall
have to be patient and begin it all over again. It is incredible,” he
added, by way of digression, addressing himself to the public (who was
absent), “what absurd reports are circulated outside with regard to what
we say and do in our secret negotiations! It extends even to all these
harebrains of the court; but you who have a foot in diplomacy I cannot
excuse. Come, let us see--we say:
“When my brother left, he went to demand on the part of Henry VIII., of
the universities of France, and above all that of Paris (preponderating
over all the others)--remark well: to demand, I say--that they should
give decisions favorable to the divorce. Now, this point appeared at
first quite insignificant; but it is just here we have shown our ability
(I would say I, but I do not wish to vaunt _myself_ over a young man
just starting out in the world like yourself). Then our king has replied
to the King of England that he would ask nothing better than to use his
influence with the universities to induce them to give satisfaction on
this subject; but that (notice this especially) the Emperor Charles V.
had made precisely the same demand in an opposite direction, in favor of
Queen Catherine, his aunt; that if he refused the emperor, he would be
extremely displeased, and that he was compelled to reflect a second time,
because the princes, his children, were held as hostages in the hands of
the emperor, and in spite of all his efforts he had not yet been able to
pay the price of their ransom stipulated at the treaty of Cambrai.
“It then remained to say that we could do nothing for him--on the
contrary, must oppose him so long as the children were held prisoners,
or while there was even a chance that they would be restored to us
on condition that we should throw our influence on the side of Queen
Catherine. All of which is as clear as day--is it not? Now you are going
to see if I have understood how to take advantage of these considerations
with Henry VIII.”
Saying this, with a slightly derisive smile, Du Bellay took from a drawer
a casket of green sharkskin, which he handed to De Vaux, who opened it
eagerly.
“Oh! how beautiful,” he exclaimed, taking from the case and holding up in
the sunlight a magnificent _fleur de lis_ composed entirely of diamonds.
“Oh! this is most superb.”
“Yes, it is beautiful!” replied Du Bellay with a satisfied air, “and
worth one hundred and fifty thousand crowns. Philip, the emperor’s
father, pledged it to the King of England for that sum. We are obliged
by the treaty to redeem it; but as we have not the money to pay, it has
been made a present to us. And here is what is better still,” he added,
displaying a quittance--“a receipt in full for five hundred thousand
crowns which the emperor owed Henry VIII.; and he now makes a present
of it to Francis I., to enable him to pay immediately the two millions
required for the ransom of the princes.”
“That is admirable!” cried De Vaux. “It must be admitted, my lord, that
we shall be under great obligations to Mlle. Anne.”
“All disorders cost dear, my child,” replied Du Bellay; “and if this
continues, they will ruin England. Think of what will have to be paid yet
to the University of Paris!…”
“And do you suppose they will consent to this demand?” interrupted De
Vaux.
“No, truly, I do not believe it,” replied Du Bellay. “Except Master
Gervais, who is always found ready to do anything asked of him, I know
not how they will decide; but, between ourselves, I tell you I believe
they will be against it. But, observe, we have not promised a favorable
decision--we have only left it to be hoped for; which is quite a
different thing.”
“That is very adroit,” replied De Vaux, “assuredly; but it seems to me
not very honest.”
“How! not honest?” murmured Du Bellay, contracting his little gray
eyebrows, and fixing his greenish eyes on the fair face of the youth.
“Not honest!” he again exclaimed in a stentorian voice. “Where do you
come from, then, young man? Know that among these people honesty is
a thing unheard of. Others less candid than myself may tell you the
contrary, knowing very well that such is not the truth. They arrange
projects with the intention of defeating them; they sign treaties with
the studied purpose of violating them; they swear to keep the peace in
order to prepare for war; and a state sells her authority and puts her
influence in the balance of the world in favor of the highest bidder.
Let the price be earth or metal, it is of no consequence; I make no
distinction. When Henry devastated our territories and took possession
of our provinces, was it just? No! ‘Might makes right’; that is the
veritable law of nations--the only one they are willing to acknowledge or
adopt. In default of strength, there remains stratagem; and I must use
it!”
“Under existing circumstances you are right,” replied De Vaux, replacing
in its case the superb _fleur de lis_, and again waving it in the
sunlight. “It is a pity,” he added, “that they may be obliged to return
this; it would set off wonderfully well the wedding dress of the future
Duchess of Orleans.”
“What! are they speaking already of the marriage of the young Duke of
Orleans?” asked Du Bellay in surprise.
“Ah! that is a great secret,” replied De Vaux confidentially. “You know
our king has not abandoned the idea of subjugating the Milanese, and, to
ensure the pope’s friendship, he offers to marry his second son to his
niece, the young Catherine de’ Medici.”
“No!” cried M. du Bellay. “No, it is impossible! How can they forget that
but a short time since the Medici family was composed of only the simple
merchants of Florence?”
“It has all been arranged, notwithstanding,” replied De Vaux. “In spite
of all our precautions, the emperor has been apprised of it. At first
he refused to credit it, and would not believe the King of France could
really think of allying his noble blood with that of the Medici. In the
meantime he has been so much frightened, lest the hope of this alliance
would not sufficiently dazzle Clement VIII., that he has made a proposal
to break off the marriage of his niece, the Princess of Denmark, with
the Duke of Milan, and substitute the young Catherine in her place. We
have, as you may well suppose, promptly advised M. de Montmorency of
all these things, who returned us, on the spot, full power to sign the
articles. M. de Grammont immediately carried them to the pope; and he was
greatly delighted, as Austria, it seems, had already got ahead of us,
and persuaded him that we had no other intention than to deceive him and
gain time. Now everything is harmoniously arranged. They promise for the
marriage portion of Catherine Reggio, Pisa, Leghorn, Modena, Ribera, the
Duchy of Urbino; and Francis I. cedes to his son his claims to the Duchy
of Milan.”
“Sad compensation for a bad marriage!” replied M. du Bellay angrily:
“new complications which will only result in bringing about interminable
disputes! Princes can never learn to be contented with the territory
already belonging to them. Although they may not possess sufficient
ability to govern even _that_ well, still they are always trying to
extend it. War must waste and ruin a happy and flourishing country, in
order to put them in possession of a few feet of desolated earth, all
sprinkled with gold and watered with blood.”
“Ah! yes,” interrupted De Vaux earnestly, “we have learned this cruelly
and to our cost. And relentless history will record without regret the
account of our reverses, and the captivity of a king so valiant and
dauntless--a king who has sacrificed everything save his honor.”
“Reflect, my dear, on all this. The honor of a king consists not in
sacrificing the happiness of his people. A soldier should be brave--the
head of a nation should be wise and prudent,” replied Du Bellay, as he
turned over a great file of papers in search of something, “Valor without
prudence is worthless. The intrigues of the cabinet are more certain;
they are of more value than the best generals. They, at least, are never
entirely defeated; the disaster of the evening inspires renewed strength
for the morrow. Cold, hunger, and sickness are not able to destroy
them.… They can only waste a few words or lose a sum of money. A dozen
well-chosen spies spread their toils in every direction; we hold them
like bundles of straw in our hands; they glide in the dark, slip through
your fingers--an army that cannot be captured, which exists not and yet
never dies; which drags to the tribunal of those who pay them, without
pity as without discrimination, without violence as without hesitation,
the hearts of all mankind.
“Gold, my child, but never blood! With bread we can move the world; with
blood we destroy it. Your heart, young man, leaps within you at the sound
of the shrill trumpet, when glittering banners wave and the noise of
battle inebriates your soul. But look behind you, child, look behind you:
the squadron has passed. Hear the shrieks and groans of the dying. Behold
those men dragging themselves over the trampled field; their heads gashed
and bleeding, their bones dislocated, their limbs torn; streams of blood
flow from their wounds; they die in an ocean furnished from their own
lacerated veins. Go there to the field of carnage and death; pause beside
that man with pallid face and agonized expression; think of the tender
care and painful anxiety of the mother who reared him from his cradle.
How often she has pressed her lips upon the golden curls of her boy, the
hope of her old age, which must now end in despair! Reflect there, upon
the field of carnage and death, on the tender caresses of wives, sisters,
and friends. Imagine the brother’s grief, the deep anguish of the father.
Alas! all these recollections pass in an instant before the half-open
eyes of the dying. Farewell! dream of glory, hateful vision now for ever
vanished. Life is almost extinct, yet with the latest breath he thinks
but of them! ‘They will see me no more! I must die far away, without
being able to bid them a last adieu.’ Such are the bitter thoughts
murmured by his dying lips as the last sigh is breathed forth. Tell me,
young man, have you never reflected when, on the field glittering in the
bright summer sunshine, you have seen the heavy, well-drilled battalions
advance; when the prince rode in the midst of them, and they saluted him
with shouts of enthusiasm and love; when that prince, a weak man like
themselves, elated with pride, said to them: ‘March on to death; it is
for me that you go!’ For you! And who are you? Their executioner, who
throws their ashes to the wind of your ambition, to satisfy the thirst
of your covetousness, the insolent pride of your name, which the century
will see buried in oblivion! Ah! my son,” continued the old diplomate,
deeply affected, with his hands crossed on the packet of papers, that he
had entirely forgotten, “if you knew how much I have seen in my life of
these horrible calamities, of these monstrous follies, which devastate
the world! If you but knew how my heart has groaned within me, concealed
beneath my gloomy visage, my exterior as impassible as my garments, you
would understand how I hate them, these mighty conquerors, these vile
plagues of the earth, and how I count as nothing the sack of gold which
lies at the bottom of the precipice over which they push us, the adroit
fraud that turns them aside from their course! But shall I weep like
an old woman?” he suddenly exclaimed, vexed at being betrayed into the
expression of so much emotion.
Hastily brushing the tear from his cheek, he began examining the package
of papers, and, instantly recovering his usual composure, became M. du
Bellay, the diplomate.
Young De Vaux, greatly surprised at the excess of feeling into which
the ambassador had suddenly been betrayed, so much at variance with his
previous manner, as well as his rule of conduct and the rather brusque
reception he had given him, still remembered it when all thought of the
occurrence had passed from the mind of his superior.
“Here, sir, read that,” he exclaimed, throwing the young man a small
scrap of paper.
“I will read it, my lord.”
“Read aloud, sir.”
“‘Cardinal Wolsey, overcome by grief and alarm, has fallen dangerously
ill. The king has been informed of it; he has ordered three physicians
to Asher, and obliged Lady Anne to send him the golden tablets in token
of his reconciliation. Furthermore, it is certainly true that the king
has said: “I would not lose Wolsey for twenty thousand pounds.” It is
unnecessary to impress upon my lord the importance of this event. My lord
will, I hope, approve of the celerity with which I have despatched this
information.’”
“It is without signature!” said De Vaux.
“I credit it entirely,” murmured Du Bellay.
“By my faith, I am delighted! These golden tablets afford me extreme
pleasure,” said De Vaux. “This will revive the hopes of poor Cardinal
Wolsey.”
“And that is all!… And you, content to know that he is happy, will remain
quietly seated in your chair, I suppose,” said M. du Bellay, fixing his
green eyes, lighted with a brilliant gleam, on young De Vaux. “Monsieur!”
he continued, “it is not in this way a man attends to the business of
his country. Since the day the cardinal was exiled, I have deliberated
whether I should go to see him or not. My heart prompted me to do so, but
it was not my heart I had to consult. I was persuaded the king would not
be able to dispense with him, and sooner or later he would be recalled to
the head of affairs. In that case I felt inclined to give him a proof of
my attachment in his disgrace. But, on the other hand, that intriguing
family who are constantly buzzing around the king induced me constantly
to hesitate. Now I believe we have almost nothing more to fear; we will
arrive there, perhaps, before the physicians, and later we shall know how
to proceed.”
“Most willingly!” cried De Vaux. “I shall be happy indeed to see this
celebrated man, of whom I have heard so many different opinions.”
“Doubtless,” interrupted Du Bellay impatiently, “pronounced by what
is styled ‘public opinion’--a tribunal composed of the ignorant, the
deluded, and short-sighted, who always clamor louder than others, and
who take great care, in order to avoid compromising their stupidity, to
prefix the ominous ‘they say’ to all their statements. As for me, I say
they invariably display more hatred toward the virtues they envy than the
vices they pretend to despise; and they will judge a man more severely
and criticise him more harshly for the good he has tried to do than for
what he may have left undone.… Gossiping, prying crowd, pronouncing
judgment and knowing nothing, who will cast popularity like a vile mantle
over the shoulders of any man who will basely stoop low enough before
them to receive it! He who endeavors to please all pleases none,” added
M. du Bellay, with a singularly scornful expression. “To live for his
king, and above all for his country, despising the blame or hatred of
the vulgar, should be the motto of every public man; and God grant I may
never cease to remember it!”
“You believe, then, the cardinal will be restored to the head of
affairs?” asked De Vaux, running his fingers through his blonde curls,
and rising to depart.
“I am not sure of it yet,” replied Du Bellay; “we are going to find
out. If the crowd surrounds him, as eager to pay him homage to-day as
they were yesterday to overwhelm him with scorn and contempt; if, in a
word, the courtiers sigh and groan around his bed, and pretend to feel
the deepest concern, it will be a most certain indication of his return
to favor. And, to speak frankly, I believe the king already begins to
discover that no one can replace the cardinal near his person as private
secretary; for that poor Gardiner copies a despatch with more difficulty
than his predecessor dictated one.”
M. du Bellay arose and started, followed by De Vaux, to the bank of the
Thames, where they entered a large boat already filled with passengers
awaiting the moment of departure to ascend the river either to Chelsea,
Battersea, or as far as Pultney, where the boat stopped. Bales of
merchandise were piled up in the centre, on which were seated a number
of substantial citizens conversing together with their hands in their
pockets, and wearing the self-sufficient air of men the extent of whose
purse and credit were well understood.
They fixed, at first, a scrutinizing glance on the new arrivals, and
then resumed their conversation.
“Come, come, let us be off now!” exclaimed a young man, balancing himself
on one foot. “Here is half an hour lost, and I declare I must be at
Chelsea to dinner.”
“Indeed, it is already an hour. Look here! This cockswain doesn’t
resemble our parliament at all; _that_ does everything it is told to do!”
he added, as he sauntered into the midst of the crowd.
“Hold your tongue, William,” immediately replied one of them; “you don’t
recollect any more, I suppose, the assembly at Bridewell, where the king,
knowing we condemned his course in the divorce affair, after having
seized all the arms in the city, told us himself there was no head so
high but he would make it fall if it attempted to resist him.”
“What shameful tyranny!” replied another, rolling a bundle under
his foot. “I cannot think of it without my blood boiling. Are these
Englishmen he treats in this manner?”
“And that wicked cardinal,” continued his neighbor in a loud, shrill
voice--“he was standing by the king, and looking at us with his
threatening eyes. He has been the cause of all the troubles we have had
with this affair. But we are rid of him, at last.”
“We are rid of him, did you say?” interrupted a man about fifty or sixty
years of age, who appeared to be naturally phlegmatic and thoughtful.
“You are very well contented, it seems to me; … but it is because you
only think of the present, and give yourself no concern whatever about
the future. Ah! well, in a few days we will see if you are as well
satisfied.”
“And why not then?” they all exclaimed in the same voice.
“Because, I tell you, because …”
“Explain yourself more clearly, Master Wrilliot,” continued young
William. “You always know what’s going to happen better than anybody
else.”
“Ah! yes, I know it only too well, in fact, my young friend,” he replied,
shaking his head ominously; “and we will very soon learn to our sorrow
that if the favor of the cardinal costs us dear, his disgrace will cost
us still more. Parliament is going to remit all the king’s debts.”
“What! all of his debts? But Parliament has no right to do this!” they
all exclaimed.
“No; but it will take the right!” replied Master Wrilliot. “William will
lose half of his wife’s marriage portion, which, if I mistake not, his
father gave him in royal trust; and I shall lose fifteen thousand crowns
for which I was foolish enough to accept the deed of conveyance.”
“Ah! ah! that will be too unjust; it ought not to be,” they all repeated.
“Yes,” continued this far-seeing interlocutor, shaking his head
contemptuously, “the king has no money to pay us. War has drained his
private treasury, but he nevertheless draws from it abundant means to
ransom French princes, who make him believe they will marry him to that
lady Boleyn; and if you do not believe me, go ask these Frenchmen who are
here present,” he added, raising his voice, and casting on MM. du Bellay
and de Vaux a glance of cold, disdainful wrath.
M. du Bellay had lost nothing of the conversation; it was held too near
him, and was too openly hostile for him to feign not to remark it.
Finding himself recognized, and neither being able to reply to a positive
interrogation nor to keep silence, he measured in his turn, very coolly,
and without permitting the least indication of emotion or anger to
appear, the face and form of his adversary.
“Sir;” he exclaimed, regarding him steadily, “who are you, and by what
right do you call me to account? If it is your curiosity that impels you,
it will not be gratified; if, on the contrary, you dare seek to insult
me, you should know I will not suffer it. Answer me!”
“The best you can make of it will be worth nothing,” replied, with
a loud burst of laughter, a Genoese merchant who did not recognize
the ambassador, as he sat by the men who directed the boat. “Forget
your quarrel, gentlemen, and, instead of disputing, come look at this
beautiful vessel we are just going to pass. See, she is getting ready
to sail. A fine ship-load!--a set of adventurers who go to try their
fortunes in the new world discovered by one of my countrymen,” he added
with an air of intense satisfaction.
“Poor Columbus!” replied one of the citizens, “he experienced throughout
his life that glory does not give happiness, and envy and ingratitude
united together to crush his genius. Do you not believe, if he could have
foreseen the cruelties Hernando Cortez and Pizarro exercised toward the
people whom he discovered, he would have preferred leaving the secret of
their existence buried for ever in the bosom of the stormy sea that bore
him to Europe, rather than to have announced there the success of his
voyage?”
“I believe it,” said Wrilliot, “his soul was so beautiful! He loved
humanity.”
“Christopher Columbus!” exclaimed young William, full of youthful
enthusiasm and admiration for a man whose home was the ocean. “I cannot
hear his name pronounced without emotion! I always imagine I see him
in that old convent of Salamanca, before those learned professors and
erudite monks assembled to listen to a project which in their opinion was
as rash as it was foolish.
“‘How do you suppose,’ said they, ‘that your vessel will ever reach the
extremity of the Indies, since you pretend that the earth is round? You
would never be able to return; for what amount of wind do you imagine it
would require to enable your ship to remount the liquid mountain which
it had so easily descended? And do you forget that no creature can live
under the scorching atmosphere of the torrid zone?’
“Columbus refuted their arguments; but these doctors still insisted,
nor hesitated to openly demand of him how he could be so presumptuous
as to believe, if the thing had been as he said, it could have remained
undiscovered by so many illustrious men, born before him, and who had
attained the highest degree of learning, while for him alone should have
been reserved the development of this grand idea.”
“And yet,” said Wrilliot, who had listened in silence, “it was permitted,
some years later, that he should go down to the grave wearing the chains
with which his persecutors had loaded him, in order to keep him away from
the world that he alone had been able to discover!”
“What perseverance! What obstacles he succeeded in overcoming!” replied
one of those who had first spoken. “I shall always, while I live, recall
with pleasure having been of service to his brother Bartholomew when he
came to this country.”
“What! he came here?” repeated William.
“Yes, and was in my own house,” continued the citizen. “Christopher,
finding the senate of Genoa and the King of Portugal refused equally
to listen or furnish him with vessels necessary for the enterprise
he had so long meditated, sent his brother to King Henry VII. He was
unfortunately captured, in coming over, by some pirates, who kept him in
slavery. Many years elapsed before he succeeded in escaping and reaching
England, where he found himself reduced to such a state of destitution
that he was obliged to design charts for a living, and to enable him to
present himself in decent apparel at court. The king gave him a favorable
reception, but Christopher, in the meantime, receiving no intelligence
from his brother, solicited so earnestly the court of Spain that he
obtained two small vessels from Isabella of Castile, and very soon after
Europe learned of the existence of another hemisphere. Spain planted her
standard there, and we thus lost the advantages which were destined for
us.”
“I do not regret it,” replied an old man sitting in the midst of the
crowd, who had until that time maintained a profound silence. “Is it
not better for a nation to be less rich and powerful than stained with
so many crimes? It is now but thirty-eight years since Columbus founded
the colony of San Domingo. This island then contained a million of
inhabitants; to-day there scarcely remain forty thousand. But,” pursued
the old man with a bitter smile, “they will not stop there. No; they will
not confine their barbarous exploits to that miserable region. They are
renewing in Peru the carnage they carried on in Mexico. It is necessary
to have a great many places for a man to die--to pass a few moments, and
then go and hide himself in the grave! I have already lived seventy-nine
years, and yet it seems to me now that my left hand still rests on my
cradle. I can scarcely believe that these white locks are scattered upon
my head; for my life has sped like the fleeting dream of a single night
that has passed. Yes, William,” continued the old man, “you look at me
with astonishment, and your eyes, full of youthful fire, are fixed upon
mine, in which the light has long been extinguished. Ah! well, you will
very soon see it extinguished in your own, but not before you will have
witnessed all their cruelties.”
“That is bad,” replied William. “But these Indians are stupid and
indolent beyond all parallel;[232] they will neither work nor pay the
taxes imposed on them.”
“And from whom do the Spaniards claim the right of reducing these people
to a state of servitude,” exclaimed the old man indignantly, “and to
treat them like beasts of burden whom they are privileged to exterminate
with impunity, and carry off the gold their avarice covets, the dagger
in one hand, the scourge in the other? They ensure them, they say, the
happiness of knowing the Christian religion! How dare they presume to
instruct these people in that Gospel of peace which commands us to love
our neighbor as ourselves, to detach our hearts from the things of the
world, and, leaving our offering before the altar, go and be reconciled
with our enemy?”
“From that point of view your argument would seem just,” replied William;
“but the fact is, if the Spaniards did not force these islanders to work
them, the mines would remain unproductive, the fields uncultivated, and
the colonies would perish.”
“You are mistaken,” replied the old man. “In acting as she does Spain
destroys in her own womb the source from whence she would draw an immense
revenue. If she had been satisfied to establish an honest and peaceable
commerce with these countries, her industry, excited to the highest
degree by the rich commodities of exchange, would have conferred an
incalculable benefit on an entire people whom her blind cupidity has
induced her to crush and destroy.
“Do you suppose these isolated negroes they buy at such enormous prices
will ever be able to replace the native inhabitants who live and die in
their own country? This strange and ferocious population will remain
among the colonies, enemies always ready to revolt; a yoke of iron and
blood will alone be sufficient to keep them in subjection. But let these
masters tremble if ever the power falls into the hands of their slaves!”
MM. du Bellay and de Vaux listened to this conversation in silence, and
the diversion was at first agreeable; but they were soon convinced that
they were suddenly becoming again the objects of general attention.
“I tell you,” exclaimed one, “they are going to look for the cardinal and
bring him back to court.”
“Well!” replied another, “I would like to see M. du Bellay in the place
of the legate Campeggio.”
“Ah! and what have they done with him, then?” they all eagerly demanded.
“He was arrested at Dover, where he had gone to embark. He was
dreadfully alarmed, believing they came to assassinate him. His baggage
was searched, in order to find Wolsey’s treasures, with which he was
entrusted, they said, for safe keeping.”
“And did they find them?” asked the Genoese merchant, eagerly leaning
forward at the sound of the word treasure.
“It seems they did not find them,” was the reply.
“Hear what they say!” whispered young De Vaux in the ear of M. du Bellay.
“I presume they were in search of the legal documents, but they were too
late. They have long ago arrived in Italy. Campeggio was careful enough
to send them secretly by his _son_ Rudolph.[233] I often saw this young
man in Rome, and heard him say his father had entrusted him with all his
correspondence and despatches,[234] as he was not certain what fate Henry
had in store for him.”
“You say,” replied young William, elevating his voice in order that M. du
Bellay might hear him, “that the king has sent the Earl of Wiltshire to
Rome to solicit his divorce. He had better make all these strangers leave
who come into our country only to sow discord, and then gather the fruits
of their villany.”
This speech, although spoken indirectly, was evidently intended for
the two Frenchmen; but the Genoese merchant, always inclined to be
suspicious, immediately applied it to himself.
“Master William,” he exclaimed, reddening with anger, “have you forgotten
that for twenty years I have been a commercial friend of your father.
And if he has made his fortune with our velvets and silks, to whom does
he owe it, if not to those who, by their honesty and promptness in
fulfilling their engagements, were the first cause of his success? Now,
because you are able to live without work, you take on this insulting
manner--very insulting indeed. However, I give you to understand that,
if it suited me to do it, I could make as great a display of luxury
and wealth as yourself, and can count on my dresser as many dishes and
flagons of silver as you have; and if it suited me to remain at home,
there is no necessity for me to travel any more on business.”
The merchant continued to boast of his fortune, and William began to
explain that his remarks were by no means intended for him, when the
passengers began to cry out: “Land! land! Here is Chelsea; we land at
Chelsea.”
The rowers halted immediately, and the little boats sent from the shore
came to take off the passengers who wished to land.
Almost all of them went; none remaining on the boat except the
ambassador, the Genoese merchant, and two citizens whose retiring and
prudent character could be read in the quiet, thoughtful expression of
their faces. They gazed for a long time on the surrounding country; at
last one of them hazarded the question:
“Do you know who owns that white house with the terraced garden extending
down to the bank of the Thames?”
“That is the residence of Sir Thomas More, the new chancellor,” replied
his companion methodically.
“Ah! it does not make much show. Do you know this new chancellor?”
“By my faith, no! However, I saw him the other day on the square at
Westminster, as I was passing; the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk were
conducting him with great ceremony to the Star Chamber (at least that
is what they told me). I stopped to look at him. There was an immense
crowd filling all the square. In crossing it the Duke of Norfolk stopped,
and, turning to the crowd before him, said the king had instructed him
to publicly proclaim what great and important services Sir Thomas had
rendered him in every position he had confided to his care, and it was
on that account he esteemed him so highly, and had appointed him now to
the highest position in the kingdom because of his virtues and the rare
talents he possessed. Everybody listened and said nothing (because you
know the last is always the best).” The citizen said this in a very low
tone.
“More replied very well,” he continued. “He said that, while deeply
grateful for his majesty’s goodness and favors, he felt no less deeply
convinced that the king had rewarded him far beyond his merits; in all
he had accomplished he had but done his duty, and he greatly feared now
that he might not possess the ability necessary for acquitting himself of
the duties of so high and important an office. And--a very singular thing
(for they do not usually speak of their predecessors)--he declared that
he could not rejoice in the honor conferred on him, as it recalled the
name of the wise and honorable prelate whom he had superseded. On hearing
that I supposed they would hiss; but not at all. He said everything so
well, with so much sincerity, dignity, and firmness, that they applauded
him with an indescribable enthusiasm. It seemed those who knew him were
never satisfied with praising him. Nobody, they said, rendered justice so
scrupulously as he; none were so wise, so disinterested; in fact, they
never ended the recital of his perfections.”
“Ah!” said the other, in a voice scarcely audible, while he looked round
to discover if any one could hear him, “we will see later if he performs
all these wonderful things, and if any one will be able to get near him
without paying even his doorkeeper, as was the case with the other.”
“Yes, we will see,” replied his companion. “None of these great lords are
worth much--any amount of _promises_; but of _deeds_--nothing!”
“But this is not a great lord,” answered the citizen.
“Ah! well, it is all the same; as soon as they rise, they grow proud,
and despise and scorn the people. You may believe if ever I obtain a
patent of nobility, and become still richer than I am now, I will crush
them beautifully; there will not be one who will dare contradict me. By
my faith! it is a great pity I had not been born a count or a baron;
I should have been so well up to all their impertinences and want of
feeling.”
“It is not very difficult,” replied his companion; “you are, I think,
sufficiently so now for the good of that poor youth who wants to marry
your daughter. He will lose his senses, I am afraid, poor fellow.”
“What did you say, neighbor?” replied the citizen, feeling the blood
mount to his face. “Do you think I will give my daughter to a wretch who
has not a cent in the world--I who have held in my family the right of
citizenship from time immemorial? My grandmother also told me we have had
two aldermen of our name. All that counts, you see, Master Allicot; and
if you wish to remain my friend, I advise you not to meddle yourself with
the tattle of my wife and daughter on the subject of that little wretch
they are putting it into her head to marry; because, in truth, the mother
is as bad as the daughter. Ah! neighbor, these women, these women are the
plagues of our lives! Don’t say any more to me about it. They will run
me distracted; but they will make nothing by it, I swear it, neighbor.
The silly jades! to dare speak to me of such a match! Hush! don’t say any
more to me about it, neighbor; for it will drive me mad!”
The neighbor _did_ reply, however, because he had been commissioned to
use his influence in softening the husband and father in favor of a young
mechanic full of life and health, who had no other fault than that of
belonging to a class less elevated than that of the proud citizen who
rejected his humble supplications with scorn.
But the _dénouement_ of this embassy, and the termination of this
romance of the warehouse, have been for ever lost to history; for M. du
Bellay, seeing they were almost in sight of Asher, made them land him,
and the two honorable citizens doubtless continued their journey and
their conversation.
At Asher M. du Bellay found everything just as he expected. The
physicians surrounded Wolsey’s bed, watching his slightest movement.
The golden tablets of young Anne Boleyn were thrown open upon the
coarse woollen bedspread that covered the sick man. Cromwell walked the
floor with folded arms. He approached the bed from time to time, looked
at Wolsey, whose closed eyes and labored breathing betokened nothing
favorable, then at the golden tablets, then at the physicians around
him. He seemed to say, “Is he going to die, and just when he might be so
useful to me?”
On seeing M. du Bellay enter, his countenance lighted up; he ran on
before him, and endeavored to arouse Wolsey from his stupor.
“My lord, the ambassador of France!” he cried in the ear of the dying man.
But he received no reply.
“It is singular,” said the doctors, “nothing can arouse him.” And they
looked gravely at each other.
“He will not die! I tell you he will not die!” replied Cromwell, evincing
the most impatient anxiety.
He approached the cardinal and shook his head.
“Crom--well,” murmured the sick man.
“Monsieur du Bellay!” shouted Cromwell a second time.
Wolsey’s eyes remained closed.
“Let him alone,” cried the physicians; “he must not be excited.”
“So I think,” said M. du Bellay. “You can tell him I have been here,”
continued the ambassador, turning towards Cromwell, “but did not wish to
disturb him.”
M. du Bellay then took his leave, and returned by the land route to
London. He encountered, not far from Asher, a party of the cardinal’s old
domestics, whom the king had sent to carry him several wagon-loads of
furniture and other effects. At the head of this convoy rode Cavendish,
one of the cardinal’s most faithful servants.
Seeing M. du Bellay, they collected around him, and hastily inquired
about their master.
Du Bellay advised them to quicken their speed, and, taking leave, went
on his way, thinking that the cardinal would not be restored to favor,
and already arranging in his mind another course in which to direct his
diplomatic steps for the future.
He was not mistaken: Wolsey escaped death, but only to find himself
surrounded by misery and abandoned to despair.
TO BE CONTINUED.
PRIMITIVE CIVILIZATION.[235]
If our modern men of science would not travel out of their sphere,
there would be no war between them and the church. In the name of the
Catholic religion we invite them to push onward in the path of scientific
discovery with the utmost energy and ardor of which they are capable.
But if their discoveries are to have any bearing on the truths of the
Christian revelation, we can accept nothing less than demonstration, and
they must not credit science, as does Mr. Tyndall, with mere theories
of speculative philosophy. With this reservation, we wish their labors
all possible success. But if poor fallible reason--whose discoveries,
after whole millenniums of toil, are little better than a record of the
blunders of one generation corrected by the blunders of another; and,
even on the supposition that they are all correct, are, by comparison
with what is unknown, as a drop of water compared with the limitless
ocean--ventures to deny the existence of the soul because it has no
lens powerful enough to bring it within the cognizance of the senses,
its conclusion is no longer scientific. The doctor has become a quack,
the philosopher a fool. If the torch which the Creator has placed at
the service of his creature, to help him to grope his way amidst the
objects of sense, and to illuminate his faith, is to be flung in his
face because it does not reveal the whole infinitude of the majesty of
his beauty, we can only compassionate so childish a misuse of a noble
gift. If natural philosophy is to rob the sensible creation of a motive
and end, and to proclaim it to be merely the result of an unintelligent
atomic attraction and evolution of forces, a more intelligent and a
more logical philosophy, in harmony with the unquenchable instinct of
immortality within the human soul, casts from it such pitiful trifling
with indignation and a holy disdain. If, in short, the science of nature
would dethrone nature’s Creator and God, we address to it the word which
He to whom all true science leads addressed to the ocean he placed in the
deep hollows of the earth: “Hitherto thou shalt come, and thou shalt go
no farther: and here thou shalt break thy swelling waves.”
Physical science cannot contradict the divine revelation. No discovery
hitherto made has done so; and until one such presents itself we are
entitled to assume its impossibility as a philosophical axiom. For this
reason we are of those who would give full rein to even the speculations
of experimental philosophy, so long as they are confined strictly within
the domain of secondary causes or natural law, and do not venture into a
sphere of thought beyond the reach of experimental science, where they
are immediately confronted with the dogmas of the faith.
We have never thought that the theory of the evolution of species
must of necessity transgress that limit. It has been made to do so by
_philosophuli_, if we may invent a name for them--speculative bigots,
who are bent on extorting from natural phenomena any plausible support
of the infidel prejudices of which they were previously possessed. A
more intelligent observation of scientific facts would have saved them
from a ridiculous extravagance which makes them resemble those afflicted
creatures, whom we so often meet with in asylums for the insane, who
suppose themselves to be God.
We must never lose sight of the fact that God can only communicate with
his creature in such a way as he can understand. If he were to reveal
himself to any of us as he is, we should die, unless he supplied us with
a miraculous capacity for supporting the vision. If he had inspired the
historian of those primitive ages to describe the astronomical phenomenon
which happened in the time of Joshua in the exact language of physical
science, what meaning would it have conveyed to people who did not
know that the earth revolves around its own axis and around the sun?
If it be objected, Why did not the Holy Spirit use language consistent
with scientific truth, and leave it to be understood afterwards in the
progress of science? we reply, Because it would have thwarted his own
designs to have done so. The Bible is a book of instruction in truth out
of the reach of human intelligence, not a book of natural science; and
it appeals to the obedience of faith rather than to reason. The mental
toil of scientific discovery was a part of the punishment inflicted on
the original transgression. To anticipate the result of that toil by
thousands of years would have been to contradict His own dispensation.
In the same manner the sublime record of the genesis of the illimitable
universe which weaves its dance of light in space is told in a few
sentences: The fiat of Him with whom one day is as a thousand years,
and a thousand years as one day, and the successive order of the
creation--that is all. Time was not then, for it was the creation of
time. Man can conceive no ideas independent of time, and so days are
named; but it is evident that the word may stand for indeterminate
periods of time. The creation of light was, it cannot be doubted,
instantaneous. But that creation was a law--limitation, relation,
succession--whose working was an evolution in successive orders or
stages, over which presided the Creator, and still presides. “My Father
worketh hitherto, and I work.” Each of these was a distinct creation,
perfect in itself, not an evolution of species. The creation was
progressive, but not in the sense of the creation of every one of its
six cycles evolving out of the preceding one; for in that case either
the lower would have disappeared or the evolution would be still in
operation. The firmament did not develop out of light, nor the ocean
and the dry land out of the firmament; nor were the fishes an evolution
from the sea-weed, nor the birds from the trees and shrubs, nor the wild
beasts from the reeds of the jungle, nor man from the lower animals. But
they were all to be made before his creation who was the sum and end
of all; and the atmosphere must be created before the birds, the ocean
before the fishes, the dry land before vegetable life.
And not only was there never any evolution of species into other species,
but the creation of every separate species was complete, so that
there has never been an evolution of any species into a higher state
or condition. There has never been any progress in that sense. Every
species, including the human being, remains precisely as it issued from
the hand of God, when it has not degenerated or disappeared. Indeed,
the tendency of all living things around us is to degeneracy and decay.
Whatever progress can be predicated of man is of his moral nature only,
and of his knowledge, through the divine revelation. But even that is not
a race progress, an evolution of species, but an individual one. If this
be conceded--and we think it scarcely admits of dispute--we see no danger
to the dogmas of the faith in allowing to the natural philosophers any
length of ages they may claim for the creation of the home of man before
he was called into being for whom it was destined.
Whatever period of time was covered by those cycles of creation,
throughout them it may be said that he was being made. If all was for
him and to end in him, it was in effect he who all along was being made.
Yet the whole was only a preparatory creation. It was only his body in
which all resulted. “A body thou hast prepared for me.” It was when “God
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” that man was created. It
was then he became “a living soul.”
The error of the physicists who reject revelation is threefold. They make
the body the man; they thus assign to his body and the inner principle
which animates it a simultaneous beginning and joint development, some
of them going so far as to make the spirit itself, or soul, or whatever
they call the animating principle, the spontaneous product of material
forces. And, throwing back the beginning of the evolution process into
untold ages, by comparison with which the life of an individual is a
scarcely appreciable moment, they suppose the process to be still going
on as it begun. All this obviously contradicts the direct statements of
revelation. It is, indeed, shocking to mere human reason. The work of the
natural creation ended with the sixth day. Up to that time, whether the
periods were long or short, the work was going on. But it was complete
when the body which had been prepared for him was animated with the
spirit of life. After that there was no farther development. It is
contrary to reason to suppose it. It is contrary to the whole analogy of
nature. Not an instance can be adduced, throughout the entire creation,
of one species developing into another--not an instance even of any
species developing within itself into a higher order of being. But up to
that period, of which it is thus written, _Igitur PERFECTI SUNT cœli et
terra, et omnis ornatus eorum: COMPLEVITQUE Deus die septimo opus suum
quod fecerat; et requievit die septimo ab uni verso opere quod patrarat_,
we may admit, without risk of heterodoxy, any doctrine of evolution of
which the physicists may give us a satisfactory evidence.
The physicists, in support of their irrational theory of evolution,
maintain that the earliest developments of human consciousness were of
the lowest order, and that man has ever since been gradually progressing
towards a higher morality and loftier spheres of thought. In this able
and interesting work Father Thébaud demonstrates, by an exhaustive
induction from the history and literature of all the nations, that the
history of mankind up to the coming of Christ, instead of a progress, was
a continual retrogression.
In his introductory chapter he establishes, by proofs which should be
conclusive to all minds unprepossessed by an arrogant perversity, that
primitive man was in possession of a primitive revelation. In the morning
twilight of the ages, as far back as we can see across the Flood, up to
the very cherubim-guarded entrance to the seats of innocence from which
the erring creature had been driven, he traces everywhere those rites
and dogmas, in their elemental form, which, in their complete development
and full significance, made known to us by the revelation of the fulness
of time, are still of faith and observance amongst the sons of God from
end to end of the habitable globe. This revelation did not go beyond
monotheism, because the fallen immortal had to be prepared, through
long ages of discipline, for the revelation of the triune nature of the
Godhead, and of his restoration to the forfeited favor of his Father
by the incarnation and atoning sacrifice of the Eternal Son. We do not
remember to have met before with the ingenious hypothesis[236] that the
configuration of the earth, consisting of an all-embracing ocean, in the
midst of which vast continents are islands, evidences the design of the
Creator to have been that “men should have intercourse of some kind with
one another,” and that on the land.
“The oceans and rivers, instead of being primarily dividing
lines, intended to separate men from one another, had precisely
for their first object to become highways and common channels
of intercourse between the various nations of mankind.”
But our author considers that the social intercommunion to which the
configuration of the earth was to administer was not to develop in the
form of “an universal republic,” but that “men were to consent to exist
in larger or smaller groups, each of them surrounded with well-defined
limits determining numerous nationalities,” united in the bond of
religious uniformity which he terms patriarchal Catholicity.
The design of the Creator of universal brotherhood amongst his creatures
was not to be fulfilled before the lapse of ages, and throughout that
dismal period it has the appearance of being perpetually thwarted
by their perverseness. The memories of Paradise rapidly faded away
amongst them. After what period of time we are not told, the sons of
God committed a second infidelity by intermarrying with the daughters
of men. The result was a race of giants--giants in capacity and crime
as well as in bodily form--whose existence universal tradition attests.
In almost open alliance with the powers of darkness, they sank with
such fearful rapidity down the abyss of depravation, dragging with them
the better portion of the race, that, to avert the triumph of hell and
the utter reprobation of his creature, the offended Creator buried the
guilty memories of colossal crime beneath an universal deluge, at whose
subsidence the first civilization reappeared on the mountains of Asia in
all its earliest purity, brought across the forty days’ extinction of
life upon the earth by the eight souls who alone had turned a deaf ear to
the universal seduction. “This idea of a gradual and deeper degradation
of human kind,” says Frederick Schlegel, “in each succeeding age, appears
at first sight not to accord very well with the testimony which sacred
tradition furnishes on man’s primitive state, for it represents the two
races of the primitive world as contemporary; and, indeed, Seth, the
progenitor of the better and nobler race of virtuous patriarchs, was much
younger than Cain. However, this contradiction is only apparent, if we
reflect that it was the wicked and violent race which drew the other into
its disorders, and that it was from this contamination a giant corruption
sprang, which continually increased, till, with a trifling exception, it
pervaded the whole mass of mankind, and till the justice of God required
the extirpation of degenerate humanity by one universal flood.”
It does not admit of a moment’s doubt, as our author argues, that with
this terrible judgment began the dissolution of that fraternal unity
which God had intended should be the happy lot of the human family,
and for which the configuration of the earth was adapted. The gigantic
unity of crime was smitten to pieces in the helplessness of division.
They who had been brothers looked in one another’s faces and found them
strange. They opened their lips, and, lo! their speech was to others a
jargon of unintelligible sounds. The one could no more understand the
other than they could the wolf or the jackal with whom they both began
to be mutually classed. The intercommunion of families of men with one
another was rudely snapped asunder. There were no means of common action,
there was no medium of common thought. The fragments into which the human
family were smitten went off in different directions, to post themselves,
in attitudes of mutual distrust and defiance, behind mountains or
morasses, on the skirts of forests, the borders of torrents, or in
the security of measureless deserts, where their practised eyes swept
the horizon. Intercommunion was rendered still more impossible by the
mutual antagonism, fear, and hatred that prevailed. And the very ocean,
instead of being a pathway for the interchange of social life, became a
formidable barrier between man and man. The dangers to be encountered
on the lands to which the winds might bear them were more to be dreaded
than the terrible phantoms which, issuing ever and anon from the home
of the storms, raged across the ocean, and lashed into merciless fury
its roaring waves. Memory had lost, in the primeval language, the key of
its treasure-house. As years went on, amidst the exacting preoccupations
of new ways of life, new surroundings, new ways of expressing their
thoughts, and their increasing tribal or race isolation, the ideas upon
which their primeval civilization had been based grew dimmer and dimmer,
until they finally disappeared.
“To establish this in detail,” says the author of _Gentilism_, “is the
purpose of this work.” And this purpose appears to us to have been
accomplished in the most convincing manner.
The scientists maintain, and it is necessary to their evolution theory,
that man began with barbarism, and moved slowly onwards in the gradual
stages of their tedious evolution process towards what they call
civilization, which is to lead, we believe, in the future developments of
the ever-continuing evolution, to some loftier state and condition, of
the nature of which they supply us with not the faintest idea.
This notion of the original barbarism of man is one of those fallacies
which get imbedded in the general belief of mankind one knows not how.
Strange to say, it has been very generally acquiesced in for no manner
of reason; and it is only of late years that thoughtful men, outside of
the faith, have come to suspect that it is not quite the truism they had
imagined.
There is a reason for this: The attenuation of the claims of another
world on the every-day life and on the conduct of men effected by the
great revolt of the XVIth century, and the keener relish for the things
of this life which consequently ensued, have infected the sentiments of
mankind with an exaggerated sense of the importance of material objects
and pursuits. Thus the idea of civilization, instead of being that of
the highest development of the moral and whole inner being of social
man, is limited to the discovery of all the unnumbered ways and means of
administering to the embellishment and luxury of his actual life. His
very mental progress, as they term it with extraordinary incorrectness,
is only regarded in this light.
“The speculators on the stone, bronze, and iron ages,” writes
our author, “place civilization almost exclusively in the
enjoyment by man of a multitude of little inventions of his
own, many of which certainly are derived from the knowledge and
use of metals. Any nation deprived of them cannot be called
civilized in their opinion, because reduced to a very simple
state of life, which, they say unhesitatingly, is barbarism.…
Barbarism, in fact, depends much more on moral degradation
than on physical want of comfort. And when we come to describe
patriarchal society, our readers will understand how a tribe
or nation may deserve to be placed on an exalted round of the
social ladder, although living exclusively on the fruits of the
earth, and cultivating it with a simple wooden plough.”[237]
Father Thébaud next proceeds, with convincing force, to demolish the
argument in behalf of the gradual evolution of the entire race from
a state of barbarism, which the evolutionists allege to have been
inevitably its first stage of intellectual consciousness drawn from the
discovery of human skeletons in caves, and in the drift of long past
ages, in juxtaposition with instruments of rude construction belonging to
the palæolithic age and fossil remains of extinct animals. This argument
has always appeared to us so feeble as to seem a mystery how it could be
employed by learned men, unless in support of some preconceived opinion
which they would maintain at all hazards. The occasional outbreaks of the
Mississippi, the terrible devastation effected by the mere overflow of
the Garonne in the South of France, give but a faint idea of what changes
must have been effected upon the crust of the earth by the subsidence of
the huge mass of water, which must have been at least eight or nine times
as ponderous as all the oceans which have since lain at peace in its
hollows. As the prodigious volumes of water, sucked and drawn hither and
thither, as they hurried to their mountain-bed, rushed in furious tides
and vast whirlpools of terrific force, they must have torn up the earth’s
crust like a rotten rag. Whole valleys must have been scooped out down
to the very root of the mountains, and _débris_ of all kinds deposited
everywhere in all kinds of confusion, so as to afford no secure data
whatever for chronological, or zoölogical, or geological deductions.
Still more conclusive is Father Thébaud’s refutation of the argument
in behalf of the evolution theory drawn from the discovery of stone
implements of rude construction in what is asserted to be the earliest
drift deposit of iron in the later strata, and bronze in the latest. To
make this argument of any force it must be proved that these periods
evolved regularly and invariably from one another throughout the whole
race of mankind. Their _periodicity_, as Father Thébaud has it, must be
indisputably proved. But this is just what it cannot be. On the contrary,
“In this last age in which we live; in the previous ages,
which we can know by clear and unobjectionable history;
finally, in the dimmest ages of antiquity of which we possess
any sufficiently reliable records, the three ‘periods’ of
stone, bronze, and iron have always subsisted simultaneously,
and consequently are no more ‘periods’ when we speak of the
aggregate of mankind, but they are only three co-existing
aspects of the same specific individual.”[238]
To the same effect is the argument that
“The artistic distance between the rough palæolithic flints
and the polished stones of the neolithic period exhibits a gap
which tells but indifferently in favor of the believers in
continuous progress. Either there has been a strange severment
of continuity, or the men of the first period were better
artists, and not such rough barbarians as the remains we
possess of them seem to attest.”
The scientific arguments, however, of Father Thébaud, in disproof of
the alleged original barbarism of the human race, satisfactory as they
are, as far as they go, are little more than introductory to the more
conclusive historical argument which constitutes the body of his valuable
and very opportune work. “The best efforts to ascertain the origin of
man,” he justly remarks, “or primeval religion, by the facts of geology
or zoölogy, can at best only result in more or less probable conjectures.”
In an argument of this nature our author begins, as was to have been
expected, from that philosophical, impassive, and ancient people who
inhabit the triangular peninsula which stretches out from no vast
distance from the original seat of the renewed race of man into the
Southeastern Atlantic. There they have dwelt from times beyond which
history does not reach. Inheriting a civilization which dates from the
subsiding Deluge, whose gradual decadence can be distinctly traced, they
are in possession of the earliest writings that exist, unless the books
of Moses or the book of Job are older, which, we do not think it is rash
to say, is, at least, doubtful. We find ourselves in the presence of the
noblest truths of even supernatural religion, mingled, it is true, with
the gross pantheistical absurdities which had already begun to deface the
primitive revelation and to deteriorate the primitive civilization.
The general process throughout the world was, no doubt, as Father Thébaud
describes--
“After a period of universal monotheism, the nations began to
worship ‘the works of God,’ and fell generally into a broad
pantheism. They took subsequently a second step, perfectly well
marked, later on, in Hindostan, Central Asia, Egypt, Greece,
etc.--a step originating everywhere in the imagination of
poets, materializing God, bringing him down to human nature
and weakness, and finally idealizing and deifying his supposed
representations in statuary and painting.”[239]
But we must venture to differ from Father Thébaud as to the religion of
the Hindoos having ever taken the latter step. The form its pantheism
took, in consequence of its tenets of the incarnations of Vishnu--the
second god of the triad--and of metempsychosis, was a worship of animals,
and especially of the cow--a worship which prevails to this day. But
this was not the gross idolatry of the Greeks and Romans, but rather a
respect, a _cultus_, in consequence of the supposed _possible_ presence
in the former of departed friends, and of the incarnation of the divinity
in the latter. Their idols are huge material representations of the might
and repose which are the chief attributes of the Hindoo deity, or of
animals with which the above-named ideas were especially associated; but
we do not think they ever were worshipped as was, for example Diana by
the Ephesians.
Be this as it may, it in no way affects the incontrovertible testimony
which Father Thébaud adduces to the high state of civilization of this
remarkable people fifteen hundred years, at all events, before Christ.
He proves it from their social institutions, which issued from a kind
of tribal municipality closely resembling the Celtic clans, but without
the principle of superseding the rightful heir to a deceased _canfinny_
by another son in consequence of certain disqualifications, and that of
the ever-recurring redistribution of land, which were the bane of Celtic
institutions. The caste restrictions, our author shows from the laws of
Menu, were not nearly so rigorous in those primitive ages; and from the
same source he exhibits undeniable proof of that purity of morals which
evidences the highest stage of civilization, and which has sunk gradually
down to the vicious barbarism of the present day. We suspect, however,
that this latter has been somewhat exaggerated. It is certainly our
impression, taken from works written by those who have lived for years in
familiar intercourse with the people, that amongst the Hindoo women there
still lingers conspicuous evidence of the purity of morals which was
universal amongst them in the beginning of their history.
It might have been added, moreover, that the laws of Menu, in addition
to their high morality, display a knowledge of finance and political
economy, of the science of government, and of the art of developing the
resources of a people which indicate a very high state of civilization
indeed.
It is impossible for us, within the limits assigned us, to follow
Father Thébaud through an argument consisting exclusively of learned
detail. Our readers, if they would have any proper appreciation of it,
must consult the work itself. We remark merely that, starting from the
admitted fact that the Vedas contain the doctrine of plain and pure
monotheism, and that in those distant ages “doctrines were promulgated
and believed in” “which far transcend all the most solemn teaching of
the greatest philosophers who flourished in the following ages, and
which yield only to the sublime and exquisitely refined teachings of
Incarnate Wisdom,”[240] our author traces the inroads of pantheism from
the time when the doctrine, recently revived by men once Christians, of
an “universal soul” was openly proclaimed, and “when it was asserted
that our own is a ‘spark’ from the ‘blazing fire,’ that God is ‘all
beings,’ and ‘all beings are God.’”[241] And he traces elaborately the
change through the several mystical works of the philosophical Brahmins
subsequent to the Vedas. Buddhism is a comparatively modern development.
We doubt its being any form of Hindooism whatever. It appears to us to
be rather the earliest development of that spirit of hostility to the
life-giving truths of the Christian revelation which began its work
almost at their very cradle--that abject principle of materialism which,
after having dragged down the vast populations of China and of North and
Western India to the lowest depths of mental and moral degradation of
which human nature is susceptible, is now sweeping over Christendom, and
threatening to “deceive,” if it were possible, “even the very elect.”
Father Thébaud’s next chapter is devoted to a historical review of the
primeval religion and its decline in Central Asia and Africa. And here
the proof is more overwhelming, if possible, than in the case of India.
As to the monotheism of the great Doctor--if we may give him such a
title--of the ancient East, and of the Zends, there can be no manner
of doubt. Nay, “even the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is
clearly contained in the most authentic part of the Zend-Avesta.” There
is also that august personage, apart from all superior beings under God,
“who stands between God and man; shows the way to heaven, and pronounces
judgment upon human actions after death; guards with his drawn sword
the whole world against the demons; has his own light from inside, and
from outside is decorated with stars.” Our author makes Zoroaster,
at the latest, a contemporary of Moses, and justly observes that the
Zend-Avesta “represents the thoughts of men very near the origin of
our species.” Now, the magnificent eloquence and profound truth of the
thoughts we meet, rivalling at times the Book of Job, the beauty of the
prayers, and the elaborate splendor of the ritual, testify to a very
different state of things in those earliest days from that alleged by
the evolutionists. Father Thébaud decides the Zends to be Vedic, and
not Persian. And no doubt in the remarkable form and construction of
the poems--dramatic, and mostly in the form of dialogue--in the tone of
thought and leading religious ideas, they closely resemble the Hindoo
Vedas. But it is our impression that we do not find in the writings of
Zoroaster that perpetual insistence on the necessity of absorption into
the deity which characterizes the Hindoo poems--the _Bhagavât-Gita_, for
example. It would appear that the Persians occupied a special place in
the dispensation of God in the ancient world. The Holy Spirit, in the
prophecies, speaks of “my servant Cyrus whom I have chosen,” and it is
certain that the pure monotheistic worship was preserved longer in Persia
than in any nation of antiquity, except the Jewish. Its corruption was
into dualism, by which the spirit of evil, as in the Indian _Trimourti_,
was invested with almost co-ordinate power with the spirit of good. But
for full information on this important and interesting subject we must
refer the reader to Father Thébaud himself.
Our limits do not admit of our giving scarcely the faintest outline of
our author’s argument in proof of the monotheism of Pelasgic Greece, and
its gradual degradation to a sensual and idolatrous anthropomorphism in
Hellenic and Heroic Greece. The substantial genuineness of the Orphic
literature he successfully establishes, as well as the similarity of
its doctrines to those of the Vedas; from which he draws the obvious
inference that the two came from the same source, and that that branch
of the Aryan family carried with them to their more distant settlements
traditions of the primitive revelation so conspicuous in the Persian and
Hindoo mystic epics, but much defaced and distorted in the course of
their long and toilsome migrations. If _pure_ monotheism ever prevailed
in Pelasgic Greece, its reign was short. Indeed, to Orpheus himself are
ascribed pantheistic doctrines. It was the poets who ushered in that
special form of idolatry which took possession of Greece, the worship of
the human being deified with all his infirmities--the _anthropomorphism_
of the gods, as Father Thébaud calls it. And the chief sinner, on this
score, was Homer, the first and greatest of them all. Yet did that
densely-populated, unseen world of the Greeks--that sensuous, nay
vicious, idolatry--which peopled the ocean and the mountains and the
forests with gods, and imagined a divinity for every fountain, and every
grove, and every valley, and every rill, with its superior deities, up to
the supreme father of Olympus, himself subject to that forlorn solution
of the riddle of “evil”--fate--bear witness from Olympus, and from Hades,
and from the realms of the sea, to the primitive revelation. It bore
witness to a civilization from which that degradation of the ideas of
God to the level of humanity, in spite of its artistic grace and poetic
feeling, deformed, however, by a filthy lasciviousness, with its short
period of literary splendor and of exalted philosophy, ending with the
sophistical negations of scepticism, was a fall, and not a progress.
For all this, “the precious fragments of a primitive revelation are
found,” as Father Thébaud truly observes, “scattered through the
writings of nearly all ancient Greek and Latin philosophers and poets.”
His two chapters on this subject--chapter vii. on “Hellenic Philosophy
as a Channel of Tradition,” and chapter viii. on “The Greek and Latin
Poets as Guardians of Truth”--are perhaps the most interesting part of
his most interesting and instructive work. They embrace a subject which
has always appeared to us as more worthy of learned labor than any other
which could be named. That life would be well spent which should devote
itself to collecting all these fragments of traditionary truth from all
ante-Christian literatures. Such a work would not turn back the flood of
rationalism, whose first risings we owe to Greece--for it is rather moral
than intellectual--but it would materially obstruct it, and would rescue
from it many souls which might otherwise be lured to their destruction by
the feeble echoes of the sophists and Aristophanes, which, beginning with
Voltaire, are now multiplying through all the rationalistic press of the
world.
Meanwhile, we cordially commend Father Thébaud’s work on _Gentilism_ to
the attentive study of all who wish for solid information and sagacious
criticism on a subject which appears to us, without wishing in the least
to underrate scientific investigation, to be more interesting and more
important than all or any of the discoveries of physical science. These,
as has been proved of late years, may be turned against the truth, and
become thus a means of darkening instead of enlightening the soul. At the
best, be they correct or erroneous, great or small, many or few, they
cannot add an inch to our stature or a day to our lives. They do not
even add to our happiness.
But a false science--one which would assign to each of us an
insignificant phenomenal existence, whose individuality will disappear,
at the end of its few days of living consciousness, in an universal
whole in an eternal state of progress--is as fatal to human happiness as
anything can be short of the abyss of reprobation. More consoling, as it
is more in accordance with right reason, is the testimony which comes
to us trumpet-tongued, in one vast unison, from all the ages, that the
history of the race is one of decadence, not of progress. The sentence
passed was death. The road to death is decadence. The way is rounded;
there is a movement onward and a growth of life until the descent begins
which lands us in dissolution. But every moment from the first cry of
infancy is a step nearer to death; we are every one of us dying every
day; and a movement towards death is not progress. Individual experience
joins its voice to that of universal history in testimony of this. The
revelation of Christ has put us in possession of the highest and certain
truth; it has given us a more exalted moral, and has recast our nature in
a higher, nay, in a divine, mould. We are still dying every day; but the
certain hope of a joyful resurrection has deprived death of its agonizing
sting, and made it, like sleep, a source of happiness instead of despair.
But this is nothing like the progress of which the sceptics prate. It is
a supernatural stage in the dispensation of God for the renewal of his
fallen creature, predetermined before all time. His own part in it--the
natural order--is one long history of decadence. There has been the ebb
and flow, the rising to fall, of all movement. But decadence has all
along triumphed over progress. Amidst what a decadence are we now living
from the promising progress of the middle ages! And we are bid to expect
so terrific a retrogression before the consummation of all things, that
“even the elect shall scarcely be saved.”
It is the witness of all the ages--human progress ebbing and
flowing--but, on the whole, the flow does not overtake the ebb. The ocean
of life has been ever ebbing into its eternal abysses, and will ebb,
leaving behind it a dry and barren waste, until the morning of eternity
shall break over the withdrawing night of time, chaos shall be for ever
sealed in the confusion and sadness of its darkness, and the final word
shall go forth, of which the sublime physical law was only a type and a
shadow: “Let there be light!”
MADAME’S EXPERIMENT.
A SAINT AGNES’ EVE STORY.
“MY THOUGHTS ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS, NOR YOUR WAYS MY WAYS, SAITH THE
LORD.”
Madame the Countess of Hohenstein stood at the window of the great hall
of her palace, waiting for the coach which was to take her to a _château_
some leagues distant, where she was to grace a grand entertainment, and
to be kept for a whole night by her hosts as an especial treasure. For
Madame the Countess of Hohenstein, spite of her sixty years and her three
grown sons, was a famous beauty still and a brilliant conversationist,
and few were her rivals, young or old, throughout the kingdom. But
her face was clouded as she waited in her stately hall that January
afternoon, and she listened with a pained expression to the sound of
a footstep overhead pacing steadily up and down. She touched a bell
presently.
“Tell your master,” she said to the servant who answered it, “that I wish
to see him again before I leave.” And soon down the winding stairway she
watched a young man come with the same steady pace which might have been
heard overhead for a half-hour past.
No need to ask the relationship between the two. Black, waving hair,
broad brow, set lips, firm chin, the perfect contour of the handsome
face--all these were the son’s heritage of remarkable beauty from his
queenly mother; but the headstrong pride and excessive love which shone
from her eyes as he came in sight met eyes very different from them.
Large and black indeed they were, but their intense look, however deep
the passion it bespoke, told of an unearthly passion and a fire that is
divine.
“Ah! Heinrich love,” his mother said, “once more, come with me.”
“Nay, little mother,” he answered--the caressing diminutive sounding
strangely as addressed to her in her pomp of attire and stately
presence--“you said I need not go; that you did not care for me at the
baron’s.”
“Not so, Heinrich. I care for you everywhere, everywhere. I am lost
without you, love of my soul. But I know you hate it, and, if you must
stay from any place, better that than some others. There are no maidens
there I care for, my son.”
She watched the calm forehead contract as she spoke. “There! as ever,”
she exclaimed. “Wilt never hear woman mentioned without a frown? You
are no monk yet, child, at your twentieth year; nor ever shall be, if I
can help it. It is enough for me, surely, to have given two sons to the
priesthood, without yielding up my last one, my hope and my pride.”
Heinrich made no answer, for the sound of the carriage-wheels was heard,
and he offered his mother his hand, led her down the steps, and placed
her in the coach. She drew him towards her, and kissed him passionately.
“Farewell, my dearest,” she said. “I count the minutes till we meet
again.” And she never ceased to watch him as long as the mansion was
visible.
He was a sight of which many a mother might have been proud, as he stood
there bare headed, the winter sun lighting his face, the winter wind
lifting his dark locks, the fresh bloom of youth enhancing his peculiar
beauty. His mother sighed deeply as the coach turned a corner which hid
him from her view--a sigh often repeated during the course of her journey.
It was a full hour before she was out of her own domains, though the
horses sped swiftly over the frozen ground. All those broad acres, all
that noble woodland, all those peasant homes, were hers; and for miles
behind her the land stretching north and west belonged with it, for she
had married the owner of the next estate, and, widowed, held it for her
son. But at her death all these possessions must be divided among distant
unknown kinsmen, if Heinrich persisted in the desire, which had been his
from early boyhood, to become a monk. His mother’s whole heart was set
against it. Her aim in life was to find for him a wife whom he would
love, and whom he would bring to their home; she longed to hold before
her death her son’s son on her knee.
The coach stopped as the sun was setting; and at the palace door, too
eager for a sight of her to wait in courtly etiquette within, host and
hostess stood ready to greet this friend of a lifetime.
“No Heinrich?” they cried, laughing. “A truant always. And we have that
with us to-day which will make you wish him here. No matter what! You
will see in time.”
And in time she saw indeed. Going slowly up the marble stairs a half-hour
later, a vision of magnificent beauty, with her ermine mantle wrapped
about her, the hood fallen back from her regal head, the eyes with the
pained look of disappointment and longing still lingering in them in
spite of the loving welcomes lavished upon her, she came, in a turn
of the stairs, upon another vision of beauty radiant as her own, and
extremely opposite.
Coming slowly down towards her was a young girl, tall and slight, with a
skin of dazzling fairness, where the blue veins in temple and neck were
plain to see; a delicate tint like blush-roses upon the cheek; great
waves of fair hair sending back a glint of gold to the torches just
lighted in the hall; eyes very large, and so deeply set that at first
their violet blue seemed black--eyes meek and downcast, and tender as a
dove’s, but in them, too, a look of pain and yearning. The face at first
view was like that of an innocent child, but beneath its youthfulness lay
an expression which bespoke a wealth of love and strength and patience,
unawakened as yet, but of unusual force. Skilled to read character by
years of experience in kings’ palaces, madame the countess read her
well--so far as she could read at all.
Evidently the maiden saw nothing that was before her; but madame held her
breath in surprise and delight, and stood still, waiting her approach.
Not till she came close to her did the girl look up, then she too stopped
with a startled “Pardon madame”; and at sight of the timid, lovely eyes,
at the sound of the voice--like a flute, like water rippling softly, like
a south wind sighing in the seaside pines--madame opened her arms, and
caught the stranger to her heart. “My child, my child,” she cried, “how
beautiful you are!”
“Madame, madame,” the girl panted in amazement, carried away in her turn
at the sudden sight of this lovely lady, who, she thought, could be,
in her regal beauty and attire, no less than a princess--“Madame sees
herself surely!”
The countess laughed outright at the artless, undesigned compliment. “And
as charming as beautiful,” she said. “I must see more of you, my love.”
Then, kissing the cheek, red now as damask roses, she passed on. In
the hall above her hostess stood with an arch smile on her lips. “Ah!
Gertrude, we planned it well,” she said. “Fritz and I have been watching
for that meeting. It was a brilliant tableau.”
“But who is she, Wilhelmina? Tell me quickly. She is loveliness itself.”
“’Tis but a short story, dear. We found her in Halle. Her name is
Elizabeth Wessenberg. She is well-born, but her family are strict
Lutherans. She--timid, precious little dove!--became a Catholic by some
good grace of the good God. But it was a lonely life, and I begged her
off from it for a while. Oh! but her parents winced to see her go. They
hate the name even of Catholic. That is all--only she sings like a lark,
and she hardly knows what to make of her new life and faith, it is so
strange to her.”
“That is all! Thanks, Wilhelmina. I will be with you soon. I long to see
her once again.”
All that evening the countess kept Elizabeth near her, and every hour
her admiration increased. A maiden so beautiful, yet so ignorant of her
own charms, so unworldly, so innocent, she had never seen. Alone in her
room that night she fell trembling upon her knees--poor, passionate,
self-willed mother!--before the statue of the Holy Mother bearing the
divine Son in her arms, and she held up her hands and prayed aloud.
“I have found her at last,” she cried--“a child who has won her way into
my heart at once with no effort of her own; a pearl among all pearls;
one whom my boy _must_ love. Lord Jesus, have I not given thee two sons?
Give me now one son to keep for my own, and not for thee. Grant that he
may love this precious creature, fit for him as though thou thyself hadst
made her for him, even as Eve was made for Adam.” And then she covered
her face, and sobbed and pleaded with long, wordless prayers.
The next day saw her on her homeward way, but not alone. She had coaxed
in her irresistible fashion till she had obtained for herself from her
friend a part of Elizabeth’s visit; and Elizabeth felt as if she were
living in a dream, there in the costly coach, wrapped in furs and watched
by those beautiful eyes. Constantly the countess talked with her, leading
the conversation delicately in such a manner that she found out much in
regard to Elizabeth’s home, and penetrated into her hidden sorrows in
regard to the coldness and lack of sympathy there. And it needed no words
to tell that this was a heart which craved sympathy and love most keenly;
which longed for something higher and stronger than itself to lean upon.
Every time she looked at the sensitive face, endowed with such exquisite
refinement of beauty; every time the childlike yet longing, unsatisfied
eyes met hers; every time the musical voice fell upon her ears, fearing
ever an echo of that same craving for something more and better than the
girl had yet known, madame’s mother-heart throbbed towards her, and it
seemed to her that she could hardly wait for the blessing which, she had
persuaded herself, was surely coming to her at last.
Now and then she spoke of the country through which they passed: and to
Elizabeth it was almost incredible that such wealth could belong to one
person only. Now and then she spoke of “my son” in a tone of exultant
love, and then Elizabeth trembled a little; for she dreaded to meet this
stranger. Very grand and proud she fancied him; one who would hardly
notice at all a person so insignificant as herself.
“Here is the village chapel, Elizabeth,” madame said, as the coach
stopped suddenly. “Will you scold, my little one, if I go in for a minute
to the priest’s house? Or perhaps you would like to visit the Blessed
Sacrament while I am gone?”
Yes, that was what Elizabeth would like indeed; and there she knelt and
prayed, never dreaming how much was being said about her only next door.
“Father!” madame exclaimed impetuously to the gray-haired priest who rose
to greet her, “I must have Mass said for my intention every morning for
a week. See, here is a part only of my offering.” And she laid a heavy
purse upon the table. “If God grant my prayer, it shall be doubled,
tripled.”
“God’s answers cannot be bought, madame,” the priest said sadly, “nor can
they be forced.”
“They must be this time, then, father. You must make my intention your
own. Will you not? Will you not for this once, father?”
“What is it, then, my daughter?”
“Father, do not be angry. It is the old hunger wrought up to desperation.
I cannot give my boy to be a monk!”
The priest’s face darkened.
“No! no!” madame hurried on. “It is too much to ask of me. And now I have
found a bride for him at last. She waits for me in the chapel, fair and
pure as the lilies. I am taking her home in triumph.”
“Does Heinrich know of this?”
“Not one word. He cannot fail to love her when he sees her. It is for
this I ask your prayers.”
The priest pushed away the purse. “I will have none of this,” he said.
“It is far better to see my poor suffer than that this unrighteous deed
should be done. You call yourself a Catholic, and pride yourself because
your house was always Catholic; and yet you dare say that anything is too
much for God to ask of you! I am an old man, madame, and have had many
souls to deal with, but I never yet saw one whose vocation was more plain
than Heinrich’s to the entire service of God’s church. Will you dare run
counter to God’s will?”
“Nay, father, it cannot be his will. Our very name would die out--our
heritage pass from us!”
“And suppose it does! Who shall promise you that if Heinrich marries
there shall ever be child of his to fill his place? And what _are_ place,
and name, and heritage, madame? That which death, or war, or a king’s
caprice may snatch away in a moment. But your spiritual heritage shall
never die. What mother on earth but might envy you if you give your three
sons--your all--to God! Many are the children of the desolate, more than
of her that hath an husband, saith the Lord. _He_ maketh a barren woman
to dwell in a house the joyful mother of children. There is a place and a
name within his walls better than sons and daughters. Do you dream what
risk you run, what part you play, when you would tempt from his calling
one who, if you leave God to work his own pleasure, shall hereafter shine
as the stars through all eternity?”
She did not answer back with pride. Instead, her whole face grew soft,
and the large tears filled her eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks.
“I want to do right,” she said humbly; “but I cannot feel that it is
right. Father, see: I will not ask you to make my intention yours. But I
promise you one thing: I _must_ ask God to grant me this blessing, but it
shall be the last time. If I fail now, let his will be done. And do you,
father, ask him to make it plain to me what his will is.”
“God bless you, daughter!” the old priest answered, much moved by her
humility. “I will pray that indeed. But still I warn you that I think you
are doing wrong in so much as trying such an experiment as this which you
have undertaken.”
“No, no,” she cried again. “No, no, father. This once I must try, or my
heart will break.”
Again in the carriage, she pressed Elizabeth to her closely, and kissed
her, and said words of passionate love, finding relief thus for the
pent-up feelings of her heart; but Elizabeth knew not how to reply. It
troubled and perplexed her--this lavish affection; for she could not
repay it in kind. It only served to waken a suffering which she had known
from childhood, a strange, unsatisfied yearning within her, which came at
the sight of a lovely landscape, or the sound of exquisite music, or the
caresses of some friend. She wanted _more_; and where and what was that
“more,” which seemed to lie beyond everything, and which she could never
grasp?
She felt it often during her visit--that visit where attention was
constantly bestowed on her, and she lived in the midst of such luxury as
she had never known before. Something in Heinrich’s face seemed to her to
promise an answer to her questionings--it was so at rest, so settled;
and this, more than anything else about him, interested and attracted
her. Madame saw the interest, without guessing the cause. She felt
also that Heinrich was not wholly insensible to Elizabeth’s presence;
and though she asked him no direct questions, she contrived to turn
conversation into the channels which could not fail to engage him, and
which the young convert also cared for most.
Elizabeth decided that Heinrich knew more than any one else, but even
he tired her sometimes. “He knows _too_ much,” she thought, “and he is
so cold and indifferent. Yet he would not be himself if he were more
like madame; and she is too tender. Oh! what does it all mean? There is
nothing that makes one content except church, and one cannot be always
there.”
So passed the time till S. Agnes’ Eve. That night, when the young people
entered the dining-hall, madame was absent. She sent a message that they
must dine without her, as she had a severe headache, and Elizabeth might
come to her an hour after dinner.
The meal was a silent one. When it was over, and they went into the
library, Heinrich seated himself at the organ. Grand chorals, funeral
marches full of mourning and awe and hope, Mass music welcoming the
coming of the Lord of Sabaoth, filled the lofty room. When he ceased,
Elizabeth was sobbing irrepressibly.
“Forgive me, forgive me!” she said. “I cannot help it. O monsieur! I
know not what it means. Love and hate, beauty and deformity, joy and
suffering--I cannot understand. Nothing satisfies, and to be a Catholic
makes the craving worse. Is it because I am only just beginning, and
that I shall understand better by and by?”
He stood at a little distance from her, looking not at her at all, but
upward and far away.
“I will tell mademoiselle a story, if she will permit it,” he said. “Many
years ago there was a princess, very beautiful, very wise, and very
wealthy. Her councillors begged that she would marry, and at last she
told them that she would do so, if they would find for her the prince
she should describe, he should be so rich that he should esteem all the
treasures of the Indies as a little dust; so wise that no man could ever
mention in his presence aught that he did not already know; so fair that
no child of man should compare with him in beauty; so spotless in his
soul that the very heavens should not be pure in his sight. They knew not
where to find that prince, but their lady knew.”
He paused, though not as for an answer. He had guessed well his mother’s
plans and hopes; he fathomed as truly Elizabeth’s nature; and when he
spoke again, it was as no one except the priest of God had ever heard him
speak:
“There are some souls whom no one and nothing on earth can possibly
satisfy. Beauty, and learning, and friendship, and home, and love, each
alike wearies them. God only can content them, and he is enough--_God
alone_. To such souls he gives himself, if they sincerely desire it. It
is a love beyond all imaginable earthly love. It satisfies, yet leaves
a constant craving which we have no wish should cease. He understands
everything: even those things which we cannot explain to ourselves. It is
he finding whom the soul loveth him, and will not let him go.”
After saying this, he sat down once more at the organ, and played again
till the hour named by madame arrived. Elizabeth found her pale and
suffering, but with a glad look in her eyes.
“You have had talk together, then,” she cried. “I heard the music cease
for a while. And is he not charming and good, my Heinrich?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said dreamily. “He made me understand a little
to-night--better than any one has ever done before.”
“Is that so, my little one? And how then?”
“Here,” Elizabeth said innocently, laying her hand on her heart, and with
no suspicion of the meaning which the countess attached to the act. “If I
could only understand more--more.”
“You will in time, most dear one--in time, in time.” And oh! the exulting
ring in madame’s voice. “But see, my precious, what I have to show you.”
A chest was drawn up beside madame’s easy-chair. She opened it, and
before Elizabeth’s dazzled eyes lay jewels of wondrous lustre and
value--long strings of pearls, changing opals with the fire-spark
trembling in them, sapphires blue as the sky, emeralds green as the sea,
and glittering diamonds. Madame drew out the costly things, and adorned
Elizabeth with one set after another by turn, watching the effect. Last
of all, she touched a spring, and took from a secret drawer a set of
pearls, large and round, with a soft amber tint in them. These she held
caressingly and sighed.
“Look, Elizabeth,” she said. “Forty years ago this very night I wore
them, when I was a girl like you. There was a great ball here. Some
one--ah! but how grand and beautiful he looked; my poor heart remembers
well, and is sore with the memory now--some one begged me to try the
charm of S. Agnes’ Eve. Dost know it, dear? Nay? Then you shall try it
too. Go supperless to rest; look not to left or right, nor yet behind
you, but pray God to show you that which shall satisfy your heart of
hearts.”
“Did he show you, madame?”
Madame sighed heavily. “Alas! love, alas! What contents us here? I had
it for a time, and then God took it from me. No prouder wife than I, no
prouder mother; but husband and sons are gone, all except my Heinrich.
Pray God to keep him for me, Elizabeth, Elizabeth.”
“And who, then, was S. Agnes, madame? And shall I pray to her that
prayer?”
Madame looked aghast, then smiled an amused yet troubled smile. “Nay,
child, I thought not of that. S. Agnes was one who loved our blessed Lord
alone, not man. She died rather than yield to earthly love and joy.”
“But why, madame?”
“O child, child! But I forget, You have only just begun the Catholic
life, my sweet. God’s love, then, is enough for some people; but they are
monks and nuns, not common Christians like you and me and Heinrich. We
could not live in that way, could we, Elizabeth--you and Heinrich and I?”
“And God would never grow tired of us, madame! Nor ever die! Nor ever
misunderstand! O madame! I think we could not live with less.” And
Elizabeth stood up suddenly, as if too agitated to remain quiet.
“Ah! love, you are only just a convert. In one’s first excitement one
fancies many things. You are meant to serve God in the world, my dear,
for many years to come--you and my Heinrich. Pray for him to-night.”
But hurrying along the hall to her own room, Elizabeth whispered
passionately in her heart: “I do not want to pray for him. Let him pray
for himself. His saints pray for him too, and God loves him, and he does
not need me. Does madame, then, suppose that he could ever care for me,
or I for him? I want more than he can give--more--more! _Show_ me my
heart’s desire, O God, my God!”
In her excitement and in the darkness she laid her hand on the wrong
door, and, opening it, found herself in an old gallery, at the end of
which a light was glimmering. Scarcely heeding what she did, she moved
toward it, and found that she was in the choir of the castle chapel. The
door fell gently to behind her, but did not close, and Elizabeth was
alone. Alone? The aisles were empty, the organ was still, the priest was
gone; but before the sacred shrine the steady ray of the lamp told that
He who filleth the heaven of heavens was dwelling in his earthly temple,
and that unseen angels guarded all the place.
But of angels or men Elizabeth thought not. Silently, slowly she moved
onward, her hands pressed upon her heart, whose passionate beating grew
still as she came nearer to the Sacred Heart which alone could fully
comfort, fully strengthen, fully understand. Slowly she moved, as one who
knows that some great joy is coming surely, and who lengthens willingly
the bliss of expectation.
And so she reached a narrow flight of steps, and made her way gently
down, and knelt. Outside, in the clear night, a great wind rose, and
rocked the castle-tower, but Elizabeth knew it not. She was conscious
only of the intense stillness of that unseen Presence; of peace flooding
her whole soul like a river; of the nearness of One who is strength and
love and truth, infinite and eternal.
“Show me my heart’s desire, O God, my God!” she sighed.
God, _my_ God! She lifted up her eyes, and there, above the shrine,
beheld the great crucifix of Hohenstein, brought from the far-off East by
a Crusader knight. She lifted up her eyes, and saw the haggard face full
of unceasing prayer, the sunken cheeks, the pierced hands and feet, the
bones, easy to number, in the worn and tortured body, the side with its
deep wound where a spear had passed.
Yet, looking upward steadily, all her excitement gone, a sacred calm
upon her inmost soul, Elizabeth knew that her prayer was answered, her
lifelong hunger satisfied. God had given her her heart’s desire.
God, _my_ God! No love but his could satisfy; and his could with an
eternal content. To that Heart, pierced for her, broken for her, she
could offer no less than her whole heart; and that she _must_ offer, not
by constraint, but simply because she loved him beyond all, above all,
and knew that in him, and in him only, she was sure of an unfailing, an
everlasting love.
Madame, seeking her in the early morning, found her room unoccupied,
then noticed the gallery-door ajar, and, trembling, sought her there.
Elizabeth had kept S. Agnes’ Eve indeed, but it was before the shrine of
S. Agnes’ Spouse and Lord.
“My daughter,” the countess said, using the word for the first time, and
with oh! how sad a tone--“what have you done this night, my daughter?”
Elizabeth lifted hand and face toward the shrine. “Madame,” she answered
slowly, as one who speaks unconsciously in sleep, “I have found Him whom
my soul loveth. I hold him, and I will not let him go.”
God himself had made his way plain indeed before Madame the Countess of
Hohenstein in this her last struggle with his will. The very plan which
she had chosen to gain her cherished hopes had crushed them. Not priest
or son, but the girl whom she herself had named for her final trial, had
shown her that God’s purposes were far aside from hers.
“Take all, O Lord!” she cried, while her tears fell like rain. “Take all
I have. I dare not struggle longer.”
One son gave up his life a martyr in the blood-stained church in Japan.
Another endured a lifelong martyrdom among the lepers of the Levant,
winning souls yet more tainted than the bodies home again to God. And
one, the youngest, and the fairest, and the dearest, was seen in China
and in India, in Peru and in Mexico, going without question wherever he
was sent, for the greater glory of God; but he was never seen in his
German home again. After they once left her, their mother never beheld
their faces. And she who had been taken to her heart as a daughter
entered an order in a distant land.
Yet none ever heard madame the last Countess of Hohenstein murmur against
her lot. Clearly, tenderly, patiently, more and more did God vouchsafe
to make his way plain to her. In chapel, day by day, she watched the
decaying banners which told of the fields her fathers won; saw the
monuments to men of her race who had fought and died for their king and
their land; read the names once proudly vaunted, now almost forgotten.
What was fame like this to the honor God had showered on her? Souls east
and west brought safe to him; life laid down for the Lord of lords; a
seed not to be reckoned; a lineage which could never fail; sons and
daughters to stand at last in that multitude which no one can number, who
have come out of great tribulation, with fadeless palms of victory in
their hands--such was her place and name in the house of God.
The quaint German text upon her tombstone puzzled travellers greatly, and
those who could decipher it wondered but the more. It ran thus:
_Requiescat in Pace._
GERTRUDE,
_Twenty-ninth and Last Countess of Hohenstein_.
The children of thy barrenness shall still say in thy ears: The place is
too strait for me; make me room to dwell in. And thou shalt say in thy
heart: Who hath begotten me these? I was barren, and brought not forth,
led away, and captive; and who hath brought up these? I was destitute and
alone; and these, where were they?
Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will lift up my hand to the Gentiles,
and will set up my standard to the people. And they shall bring thy sons
in their arms, and carry thy daughters upon their shoulders. And thou
shalt know that I am the Lord; for they shall not be confounded that wait
for him.
THE BASQUES.
We are all Basques. Nay, reader, be not startled at having your supposed
nationality thus suddenly set aside. An author of far more learning than
we can lay claim to--Señor Erro, a Spanish Basque--gravely asserts that
all the inhabitants of Europe and Asia, if not of America also, sprang
from the Basques. In short, they--that is, _we_--are the primitive race.
And this fearless writer, with a due sense of national superiority, goes
boldly on to prove that Adam and Eve spoke the Basque language in the
terrestrial Paradise, of which he gives a detailed description according
to the Biscayan interpretation of the Biblical account.
We remember how, in search of Adam--great progenitor!--whose
said-to-be-fine statue is among the army of saints on the glorious roof
of Milan cathedral, we got bewildered on that celestial height, so that
we do not to this day feel sure of having discovered the true Adam, and
might never have found our way down to earth again had it not been for
the kind offices of one of Victor Emanuel’s soldiers. So it is with many
a _savant_ in tracing the origin of the human species. Lost in threading
the way back to our first parents, they need some rough, uncultured soul
to lead them out of the bewildering maze--back to the point whence they
started.
But let us hope in this instance filial instinct has not mistaken the
genuine Adam--the first speaker, it is possible, of Basque. Señor Erro
finds in this language the origin of all civilization and science. It
must be confessed we have wofully forgotten our mother-tongue; for it is
said to be impossible to learn to speak it unless one goes very young
among the Basques. It is a common saying of theirs that the devil once
came into their country to learn the language, but gave it up in despair
after three hundred years’ application! It may be inferred he had lost
the knowledge he had made such successful use of a few thousand years
before in the Garden of Eden.
M. Astarloa, likewise a Biscayan, maintains that the extraordinary
perfection of this language is a proof it is the only one that could have
been conferred on the first man by his Creator, but in another place says
it was formed by God himself at the confusion of tongues in the tower of
Babel--which assertions rather lack harmony.
Max Müller, the eminent philologist, pretends a serious discussion
took place about two hundred years ago in the metropolitan chapter of
Pampeluna as to the following knotty points:
_First._ Was Basque the primitive language of mankind? The learned
members confessed that, however strong might be their private
convictions, they did not dare give an affirmative reply.
_Secondly._ Was Basque the only language spoken by Adam and Eve in the
garden of Eden?
As to this, the whole chapter declared there could be no doubt whatever
that it was “impossible to bring a reasonable objection against such an
opinion.”
This is extremely amusing; but, of course, too absurd to be true.
Besides, the archives of Pampeluna do not afford the slightest hint of so
singular a record.
Southwestern France, however, has many traditions of the Oriental origin
of its inhabitants. Tarbes and Lourdes are said to have been founded by
Abyssinian princesses. Belleforest, in his _Cosmography_, says Japhet
himself came into Gaul and built the city of Périgueux, which for several
ages bore his name. Père Bajole, of Condom, a Jesuit of the XVIIth
century, is less precise in his suppositions, but thinks the country was
peopled soon after the Deluge, and therefore by those who had correct
notions of the true God. Moreover as Noah, of course, would not have
allowed his descendants to depart without suitable advice as to the way
of salvation, especially to the head of the colony, he concludes that
many of the ancient Aquitanians were saved. The Sire Dupleix cites the
epistle of S. Martial to show they had retained some proper notions of
theology, which accounts for the rapid success of the first Christian
apostles of the country.
But to return to the Basques in particular: In the _Leyenda
Pendadola_--an old book of the XIth century--we read that “the first
settlement in Spain was made by the patriarch Tubal, whose people
spoke the language still used in the provinces of Biscay”--that is,
the Basque. William von Humboldt likewise attributed to the Basques an
Asiatic origin, and was decidedly of the school of MM. Erro and Astarloa,
though he rejected their exaggerations. The Basque language, so rich,
harmonious, and expressive, is now generally believed to be one of the
Turanian tongues. Prince Lucian Bonaparte shows the analogy between it
and the Hungarian, Georgian, etc.
The word Basque is derived from the Latin _Vasco_; for in Southwestern
France it is quite common to pronounce the letter _v_ like _b_--a habit
which made Scaliger wittily say: _Felices populi, quibus Vivere est
Bibere_.
The Basque country consists of several provinces on both sides of the
Pyrenees bordering on the Bay of Biscay. Labourd, Soule, and Lower
Navarre are now in the department of the Basses-Pyrenees, on the French
side. The two provinces of Biscay and Guipuzcoa--a part of Alava and of
Upper Navarre--belong to Spain. The whole Basque population cannot be
more than 500,000. The people, as we have had a proof of, are proud of
their ancient nationality; and though there is a difference of manners,
physiognomy, and even of idiom in these sections, they all recognize each
other as brethren. They are a noble race, and have accomplished great
deeds in their day. Entrenched behind their mountains, they long kept
the Romans at bay, drove back the Moors, and crushed the rear-guard of
Charlemagne.
The Basques have always been famous navigators. The first suggestion
that led to the discovery of America is said to have been given
Christopher Columbus by Sanchez de Huelva, a Basque pilot. The Basques
of Labourd certainly discovered Cape Breton. They were the first to go
on whale-fisheries, which, in 1412, extended as far as Iceland. And
Newfoundland seems to have been known to them in the middle of the
XVth century. The first name of Cape Breton--isle des Bacaloas or
Bacaloac--is a Basque name.
In the middle ages the Basques maintained a certain independence by means
of their _fueros_, or special privileges, which had been handed down from
time immemorial and confirmed by several of the kings of France. The wood
of Haïtze is still pointed out as the place where the assemblies of the
elders, or _bilçars_, were formerly held in the district of Labourd. Here
came together the proprietors of the different communes to regulate their
administrative affairs. The most of the assembly leaned on their staves
or against the venerable oaks of the forest. But the presiding member sat
on a huge stone, the secretary on another, while a third was used for
recording the decrees of the assembly, to which the kings of France and
Navarre were often forced to yield by virtue of their _fueros_.
And this country was never over-ruled by oppressive lords who held
it in subjection by means of their fortified castles. The device of
Bayonne--_Nunquam polluta_--seems to express the unstained independence
that had never been subjected to feudal dominion. It doubtless had great
families who distinguished themselves by their bravery and military
services, and were noted for their wealth, like the _casas de parientes
majores_--the twenty-four families of great antiquity--in Guypuzcoa,
among which was the family of Loyola of Aspeïtia, to which the immortal
founder of the Jesuits belonged, as well as that of Balda, his mother’s
family; but they never pretended to the feudal authority of the great
nobles of France and Spain. It was only in the XVth century that several
Basque families, who had become wealthy, ventured to erect some
inoffensive towers like those of Uturbi near St. Jean de Luz, occupied by
Louis XI. while on the frontier arranging the treaty between the kings of
Castile and Arragon.
It is said of the Basques of Spain: As many Basques, as many nobles. Many
of their villages have coats of arms on all the houses, which contrast
with the decayed lattices and crumbling roofs. The owners point to their
emblazonry with the air of a Montmorency. When the Moors invaded the
North of Spain, thousands of mountaineers rose to drive them out. As
they made war at their own expense, those who returned alive to their
cottages received the reward of gentlemen--the right of assuming some
heraldic sign and graving it on their walls as a perpetual memorial of
their deeds. In the valley of Roncal the inhabitants were all ennobled
for having distinguished themselves at the battle of Olaso, in the reign
of Fortunio Garcia. In the village of Santa Lucia, not far from Toledo,
an old house of the XIIIth century is still to be seen with double lancet
windows, which has its record over the door proving the part a former
owner had taken at the bridge of Olaso--an azure field traversed by a
river, which is spanned by a bridge with three golden arches surmounted
by the bleeding head of a Moor.
In a faubourg of Tolosa is a modest house stating that Juan Perez having
borne arms for more than fifty years in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Flanders,
etc., and taken part in the great naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto
under Don Juan of Austria, the emperor created him knight and gave him
for his arms the imperial eagle.
But most of these armorial bearings have reference to the chase, to
which the people were so addicted. The trophies they brought home,
instead of being nailed up over the door, were now graven there in
stone--sometimes a wolf, or a hare, or even a favorite hound. Two dogs
are on the arms inherited by the Prince of Viana, the donor of the fine
bells to the basilica of Notre Dame de Lourdes.
In the commune of Bardos is a château which bears the name of Salla from
the founder of the family. It was he who, fighting under Alphonse the
Chaste, King of Navarre, had his legs broken by the explosion of a rock,
from which time the house of Salla has had for its arms three _chevrons
brisés, d’or, sur un champ d’azur_. The most illustrious member of this
family is Jean Baptiste de la Salle, who founded the admirable order
of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, with a special mission for
instructing the poor.
Mgr. de Belsunce, the celebrated bishop of Marseilles, was also of Basque
origin. The Château de Belsunce is still to be seen--an old manor-house
with Gothic turrets bespeaking the antiquity of the family. The name is
associated with the legends of the country. Tradition relates that a
winged monster having terrified the whole region, a knight of this house
armed himself with a lance and went forth to attack the monster in his
den. The dragon, having received a mortal wound, sprang with a dying
effort upon his enemy, seized him, and rolled with him into the Nive.
From that time the family of Belsunce bore on its shield a dragon sable
on a field gules.
The arms of Fontarabia is a siren on the waves bearing a mirror and a
comb--symbol of this enchanting region. This historic place, once the
rival of St. Jean de Luz, now wears a touching aspect of desolation and
mourning which only adds to its attractions. Its ruins have a hue of
antiquity that must delight a painter’s eye. The long street that leads
to the principal square carries one back three hundred years, most of the
houses being in the Spanish style of the XVIth century. There are coats
of arms over every door, and balconies projecting from every story, with
complicated trellises or lattices that must almost madden the moon-struck
serenader. Nothing could be more picturesque than this truly Spanish
place. Many of the houses bear the imposing name of _palacios_, which
testify to the ancient splendor of this _ciudad muy noble, muy leal, y
muy valerosa_. Overlooking the whole place is the château of Jeanne la
Folle, massive, heavy, its walls three yards thick, its towers round--a
genuine fortress founded in the Xth century, but mostly rebuilt by
Charles V. Its chronicles are full of historic interest. Here took place
the interview between Louis XI. and Henri IV. of Castille, whose arrogant
favorite, Beltram de la Cueva, in his mantle broidered with gold and
pearls and diamonds, and his boat with its awning of cloth of gold, must
have offered a striking contrast to the extreme simplicity of the King of
France.
The fine, imposing church of Fontarabia, in the transition style, is a
marked exception to the Basque churches generally, which are of simple
primitive architecture, with but few ornaments; and these, at least on
the French side of the frontier, mostly confined to the sanctuary, which
is rich in color and gilding. Perhaps over the main altar is a painting,
but by no means by Murillo or Velasquez. If on the Spanish side, it may
be a S. Iago on a white steed, sword in hand, with a red mantle over his
pilgrim’s dress, looking like a genuine _matamore_, breathing destruction
against the Moors. The Madonna, too, is always there, perhaps with a
wheel of silver swords, as if in her bosom were centred all the sorrows
of the human race.
The galleries around the nave in the Basque churches gives them the
appearance of a _salle de spectacle_; but the clergy think the separation
of the sexes promotes the respect due in the sanctuary, and the people
themselves cling to the practice. The men occupy the galleries. They
all have rosaries in their hands. From time to time you can see them
kiss their thumbs, placed in the form of a cross, perhaps to set a seal
on their vows to God, as people in the middle ages used to seal their
letters with their thumbs to give them a sacred inviolability. Licking
the thumb was, we know, an ancient form of giving a solemn pledge; and,
till a recent period, the legal form of completing a bargain in Scotland
was to join the thumbs and lick them. “What say ye, man? There’s my
thumb; I’ll ne’er beguile ye,” said Rob Roy to Bailie Nicol Jarvie.
When Mass is over, every man in the galleries respectfully salutes his
next neighbor. This is considered obligatory. Were it even his deadliest
enemy, he must bow his head before him. Mass heard with devotion brings
the Truce of God to the heart.
The women occupy the nave, sitting or kneeling on the black,
funereal-looking carpet that covers the stone above the tomb of their
beloved dead. For every family has a slab of wood or marble with an
inscription in large characters, which covers the family vault below, and
their notions of pious respect oblige the living to kneel on the stone
that covers the bones of their forefathers. Or this _was_ the case; for
of late years burial in churches has been forbidden, and these slabs
now only serve to designate the inalienable right of the families to
occupy them during the divine service. It is curious and interesting to
examine these sepulchral slabs; for they are like the archives of a town
inscribed with the names of the principal inhabitants, with their rank
and occupation. In some places the women, by turns, bring every morning
an offering for their pastor, which they deposit on these stones like an
expiatory libation. Several of them are daily garnished with fruit, wine,
eggs, beeswax, yarn, and linen thread, and the _curé_, accompanied by his
servant or the sacristan, goes around after Mass to collect this tribute
of rural piety in a basket, and give his blessing to the families. These
offerings of the first-fruits of the earth are still continued, though
the dead are buried elsewhere.
The seat of that mighty potentate, the village mayor, is in the choir, as
befits his dignity, which he fully sustains by his majestic deportment in
sight of the whole congregation. Sometimes he chants at the lectern, like
Charlemagne. The square peristyle of the church is often divided between
him and the village school-master for their respective functions, as if
to invest them with a kind of sanctity.
In Soule the belfry is formed by extending upwards the western wall of
the church in the form of three gables, looking like three obelisks.
The bell is hung in the central one. The origin of this custom is thus
explained by M. Cénac Montaut:
“In former times, when the Basques had some difficulty about accepting
all the truths of the Gospel, the clergy were unable to make them
comprehend the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. One of the priests, like S.
Patrick with the shamrock, saw he must appeal to the senses in order to
reach the mind and heart. Entering his rude pulpit one day, he addressed
his flock something after the following manner: ‘Some of you, my dear
brethren, recently objected that the God of the Old Testament, in the
tables of the law, wished to be worshipped as one God, and that to add
now the Son and Holy Spirit to the Deity is to overthrow the law of Sinai
and affect the divine Essence itself.… My dear brethren, hitherto we have
had but one gable on our belfry, directing towards heaven the innermost
prayer of the heart, and bearing the bell by which God seems to speak to
us in return. If, now, two other gables were added to this, would not
this triple tower, standing on one base, and pointing to the same heaven,
still constitute one belfry?’”
This appeal was effective. Those who had been unable to accept the
abstract doctrine of the Trinity perfectly comprehended this material
unity. The other priests of Soule hastened to make use of so happy an
oratorical figure, and all through the valley of the Gave rose the
three-gabled, dogmatic belfries, such as we see at the present day.
Near the church is often a modest white house with a small garden
containing a few trees and flowers, where the Daughters of the Cross
devote themselves to the instruction of children, planting the seeds of
piety in their youthful hearts.
The Basque houses, with their triangular, tile-covered roofs, often
project like a _châlet_, and are painted white, green, and even pink.
The casements are made in the form of a cross, and stained red. The
doorway is arched like a church-portal, and has over it a Virgin, or
crucifix, or some pious inscription. There is no bolt on the door; for a
Basque roof is too inviolable to need a fastening. At the entrance is a
_bénitier_ (for holy water), as if the house were to the owner a kind of
sanctuary to be entered with purification and a holy thought. You enter
a large hall that divides the house into two parts, and contains all the
farming utensils. It is here the husbandman husks his corn and thrashes
his wheat. The uncolored walls of the rooms are hung with a few rude
pictures, as of the Last Judgment, the Wandering Jew, or Napoleon. There
are some large presses, a few wooden chairs, a shelf in the corner with
a lace-edged covering for the statue of the Virgin, who wears a crown of
_immortelles_ on her head and a rosary around her neck. At one end of the
room is a bed large enough for a whole family, and so high as almost to
need a ladder to ascend it. The open pink curtains show the holy-water
font, the crucifix, and faded palm branch annually renewed. There is
no house without some religious symbol. The Basque has great faith in
prayer. He stops his plough or wild native dance to say the Angelus. He
never forgets to arm himself with the sign of the cross in a moment of
danger. He makes it over the loaf of bread before he divides it among the
family. The mother makes it on the foreheads of her children at night. At
Candlemas a blessed candle burns under every roof in honor of the true
Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. It is the
boast of the country that Protestantism never found entrance therein,
even during its prevalence in Béarn at the time of Joan of Navarre,
though that princess took pains to have the Huguenot version of the New
Testament translated into Basque and published at La Rochelle in 1591
for their benefit. The whole Bible is now translated, M. Duvoisin having
devoted six years to the work, and Prince Lucian Bonaparte a still longer
time in settling the orthography and superintending the edition.
It must not be supposed, however, that the Basques are an austere race.
They are very fond of their national dances, and excel in the _jeu de
paume_. Among their other amusements is the _pastorale_, acted in the
open air with a _chirula_ (a kind of flute) and a tambourine for the
orchestra. The subject is borrowed from the Bible, the legend of Roland,
the wars with the Moors, etc. They are composed by native poets, and have
a certain antique simplicity not without its charm. The people flock to
these representations, as to their Cantabrian dances, in their gayest
attire. The old man wears a _béret_ drawn over his forehead, while his
long hair floats behind in token of the nobility of his ancient race.
He wears short breeches, long woollen stockings, and leather shoes with
handsome silver buckles.
The young Basque, straight, well formed, and proud in his bearing, wears
his blue _béret_ jauntily perched on one side of his head. His jacket is
short. Silver clasps fasten his collar and wristbands. He wears sandals
on his feet, with red bars across the instep. A bright red sash girdles
his waist--as of all mountaineers, enabling them to endure fatigue the
better, like the surcingle of a horse. “Beware of that young man with the
loose girdle,” said Sulla, speaking of Cæsar. For among the Romans the
word _discinctus_ was applied to the indolent, cowardly soldier, as _alte
cinctus_ (high-girdled) meant a prompt, courageous man.
The girls, slender in form, with regular, expressive features, are veiled
in a black mantilla, or else carry it on their arms. A gay kerchief is
wound around the back of their heads like a turban, leaving visible the
shining bands of their beautiful black hair.
The old women wear white muslin kerchiefs on their heads, with one corner
falling on the shoulder. On the breast is suspended a golden heart or
_Saint-Esprit_. Sometimes they are enveloped from head to foot in a
great black cloak, which is absolutely requisite when they attend a
funeral. This mantle forms part of the _trousseau_ of every bride of any
substance, and she wears it on her wedding-day, as if to show herself
prepared to pay due honor to all the friends who should depart this life
before her. It must be a great comfort for them to see this mourning
garment prepared in advance, and the sight of the bride veiled in her
long black capuchin must diffuse a rather subdued gayety over the wedding
party.
The Basques pay great respect to the dead. When a man dies, his next
neighbor on the right carries the crucifix before his bier in the funeral
procession, and his nearest neighbor on the left walks at its side.
And the whole neighborhood assembles around it in church, with lighted
candles in their hands, to hear the Mass for the Dead. They adorn their
graveyards with shrubs and flowers. And they never omit the month’s-mind,
or anniversary service.
Of course no one goes to the Basque country without visiting the famous
Pas de Roland. The whole region is singularly wild and picturesque.
We pass through a deep gorge encumbered with rocks, over which the
Nive plunges and foams in the maddest possible way. Twin mountains of
granite rise to the very heavens, their sides covered with the golden
broom, or furrowed with deep gullies that tell of mountain torrents. The
overhanging cliffs, and the dizzy, winding road along the edge of the
abyss, create a feeling of awe; and by the time we arrive, breathless and
fatigued, at the Pas de Roland, we are quite prepared to believe anything
marvellous.
“I lie reclined
Against some trunk the husbandman has felled;
Old legendary poems fill my mind,
And Parables of Eld:
I wander with Orlando through the wood,
Or muse with Jaques in his solitude.”
This archway was produced by a mere blow from the heel of the great
Paladin, who did not consider the mountain worthy the use of his mighty
sword. Everything is bathed in the golden light of the wondrous legend,
which harmonizes with the spot. We even fancy we can hear the powerful
horn of Orlando--the greatest trumpeter on record. We can see Carloman,
with his black plumes and red mantle--opera-like--as he is described in
the _Chant d’Altabisçar_! The natives, _pur sang_, do not call this pass
by the name of Roland, but _Utheca gaiz_--a bad, dangerous passage, as
in truth it is. It is the only means of communication with the opposite
side of the mountain. After going through it, the mountains recede, the
horizon expands, a country full of bucolic delights is revealed to the
eye, the exaltation of the soul subsides, and the mind settles down to
its normal state of incredulity.
Just below the Pas de Roland, on the French side, are the thermal springs
of Cambo, in a lovely little valley watered by the Nive. The air here is
pure, the climate mild, the meadows fresh and sprinkled with flowers, the
encircling hills are crowned with verdure. Never did Nature put on an
aspect of more grace and beauty than in this delicious spot. One of the
springs is sulphurous, the other ferruginous. They became popular among
the Spanish and Basques during the last century when patronized by Queen
Marie Anne de Neuberg, the second wife of Don Carlos II. of Spain. Some
of her royal gifts to the church of Cambo are still shown with pride.
These springs were visited as early as 1585, among others, by François
de Nouailles, Bishop of Dax, who is often referred to in proof of their
efficacy; but as that eminent diplomatist died a few weeks after he tried
the waters, the less said of his cure the better for their reputation.
Napoleon I., however, had faith in their virtues. He visited Cambo, and
was only prevented by his downfall from building a military hospital here.
Not two miles from Cambo is the busy town of Hasparren. The way thither
is through a delightful country, with some fresh beauty bursting on the
eye at every step. On all sides are to be seen the neat white cottages of
the laborers in the midst of orchards, meadows, and vineyards; sometimes
in the hollows of a valley like a nest among the green leaves; sometimes
on the hills commanding the most delicious of landscapes. Hasparren has
about six thousand inhabitants, mostly farmers, but who try to increase
their income by some trade. Twelve hundred of them are shoemakers; seven
or eight hundred are weavers, curriers, or chocolate-makers. The spacious
church is hardly able to contain the crowd of worshippers on festivals. A
curious history is connected with the belfry.
The government having imposed a tax on salt in 1784, the people around
Hasparren, who had hitherto been exempted, resolved to resist so heavy
an impost. They rang the bell with violence to call together the
inhabitants. Even the women assembled in bands with spits, pitchforks,
and sickles, to the sound of a drum, which one of their number beat
before them. The mob, amounting to two thousand, entrenched themselves
in the public cemetery, where they received with howls of rage the five
brigades the governor of Bayonne was obliged to send for the enforcement
of the law. Bloodshed was prevented by the venerable _curé_, who rose
from his sick-bed and appeared in their midst. By his mild, persuasive
words he calmed the excited crowd, induced the troops to retire and the
mob to disperse. The leaders being afterwards arrested, he also effected
their pardon--on humiliating conditions, however, to the town. The
hardest was, perhaps, the destruction of the belfry, from which they had
rung the alarm; and it was not till some time in the present century
they were allowed to rebuild it.
It is remarkable that the ancient Basques left no poems, no war-songs to
celebrate their valorous deeds, no epic in which some adventurous mariner
recites his wanderings; for the language is flexible and easily bends to
rhythm. But the people seem better musicians than poets. There are, to be
sure, some rude plaints of love, a few smugglers’ or fishermen’s songs,
sung to bold airs full of wild harmony that perhaps used to animate
their forefathers to fight against the Moors; but these songs have no
literary merit. Only two poems in the language have acquired a certain
celebrity, because published by prominent men who ascribed to them a
great antiquity. One of these is the _Chant des Cantabres_, published by
Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1817 in connection with an essay on the Basque
language. Ushered into the world by so distinguished a linguist, it was
eagerly welcomed by German _savants_, and regarded as a precious memorial
of past ages. M. von Humboldt took it from the MSS. of a Spaniard
employed in 1590 to explore the archives of Simancas and Biscay. He
pretended to have found it written on an old, worm-eaten parchment, as
well it might be if done soon after the invasion of the country by the
Romans. We wonder he did not also find the history of the conquest of
Cantabria in five books composed by the Emperor Augustus himself, said to
have been in existence in the XVIIth century!
The _Chant d’Altabisçar_ is said to have been discovered by M. La Tour
d’Auvergne in an old convent at St. Sebastian, in 1821, written on
parchment in characters of the XIIIth or XIVth century. It is unfortunate
so valuable a MS., like the original poems of Ossian, should have been
lost! The contents, however, were preserved and published in 1835,
and, though now considered spurious, merit a certain attention because
formerly regarded as genuine by such men as Victor Hugo, who, in his
_Légende des Siècles_, speaks of Charlemagne as “plein de douleur” to
think
“Qu’on fera des chansons dans toutes ces montagnes
Sur ses guerriers tombés devant des paysans,
Et qu’on en parlera plus que quatre cents ans!”
M. Olivier, in his _Dictionnaire de la Conversation_, enthusiastically
exclaims: “What shall I say of the Basque chants, and where did this
people, on their inaccessible heights, obtain such boldness of rhythm
and intonation? Every Basque air I know is grand and decided in tone,
but none more strikingly so than the national chant of the Escualdunacs,
as they call themselves in their language. And yet this fine poem has
for some of its lines only the cardinal numbers up to twenty, and then
repeated in reverse order. Often, while listening to the pure, fresh
melody of this air, I have wondered what meaning was concealed beneath
these singular lines. From one hypothesis to another I have gone back
to the time when the Vascon race, hedged in at the foot of the Pyrenees
by the Celtic invaders, sought refuge among the inaccessible mountains.
Then, it seemed to me, this _Chant_ was composed as a war-song in which,
after recounting, one by one, their years of exile, they numbered
with the same regularity, but in a contrary direction, their deeds of
vengeance!”
Such is the power of imagination. It is the
“Père Tournamine
Qui croit tout ce qu’il s’imagine.”
Let us give the literal translation of the lines in which M. Olivier
finds such an expression of sublime vengeance:
“They come! they come! What a forest of lances!
With many-colored banners floating in the midst.
How the lightning flashes from their arms!
How many are there? Boy, count them well!
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven, twelve,
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen,
twenty.
…
They fly! they fly! Where, then, is the forest of lances?
Where the many-colored banners floating in the midst?
The lightning no longer flashes from their blood-stained arms.
How many left? Boy, count them well!
Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen,
thirteen,
Twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three,
two, one.”
The first book in the Basque language was printed in the XVIth century,
in the same year Rabelais published his _Pantagruel_, in which he makes
Panurge ask in the Basque language for an _erremedio_ against poverty,
that he might escape the penalty of Adam which brought sweat to his
brow--a question many are still asking in far more intelligible language.
The most ancient specimens of genuine Basque literature show what changes
the language has undergone within four or five centuries, which is a
proof against the authenticity of these _Chants_. M. Bladé, a French
critic, says his butter-man readily translated every word of the _Chant
des Cantabres_, so admired by the Baron von Humboldt. Fortunately, it is
not needed to prove the valor of the Cantabrians when their country was
invaded by the Romans, nor that of _Altabisçar_ to show the part they
took in Roncesvalles’ fearful fight.
THE ETERNAL YEARS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE.”
“Tranquil Hope still trims her lamp
At the Eternal Years.”--_Faber._
CHAPTER I.
OUR IMPRESSIONS.
It is probable that most of us have been, at some time in our
intellectual and spiritual life, conscious of a divergence between our
mental impressions and our received belief respecting the nature and
characteristics of the divine Being. Outside the closed-in boundaries of
our faith there has been, as it were, a margin of waste land which we
seldom explore, but the undefined, uncultivated products of which flit
athwart our imagination with something like an uncomfortable misgiving.
We do not go far into it, because we have our certain landmarks to stand
by; and while the sun of faith shines bright on these, we can say to
ourselves that we have nothing really to do with the sort of fog-land
which surrounds our own happy enclosure. Our allotment is one of peace
within the true fold of the church.
We know where we are; we know what we have got to do; and we refuse to
be seriously troubled by the dubious questions which may possibly never
disturb us, unless we deliberately turn to them.
To us, as Catholics, this is a safe resolve. We know the Church cannot
err. We believe, and are ready, absolutely and unreservedly ready,
to believe, all she puts before us as claiming our belief. And this
is no childish superstition. It is no unmanly laying down of our
inalienable right to know good from evil; it is no wilful deafness
or deliberate closing of our eyes. It is the absolutely necessary
and perfectly inevitable result of the one primary foundation of all
our belief--namely, that the church is the organ of the Holy Ghost,
the infallible utterance of an infallible voice, which voice is none
other and no less than the voice of God, speaking through and by the
divinely-instituted kingdom which comprises the church of God. With
this once firmly fixed in our hearts and intellects, nothing, can
disturb us. Even supposing something to be defined by the church for
which we were unprepared--as was the case with some on the definition
of the Infallibility of the Sovereign Pontiff--still these surprises,
if surprises they be, can be no otherwise than sweet and welcome. To
us there cannot be a jarring note in that voice which is the voice
of the Holy Ghost. The trumpet cannot give a false sound. It is our
fault--either intellectually our fault (which is rather a misfortune
than a fault) or spiritually (which is from our negligence and
lukewarmness)--if the blast of that trumpet painfully startle us from
our slumbers. To all who are waking and watching the sound can only be
cheering and encouraging. The good soldier is ever ready to hear it and
prompt to obey. The slumberer is among those to whom our Lord says: “You
know how to discern the face of the sky, and can you not know the signs
of the times?”[242]
He evidently expects us to know the signs of the times. The Lord is not
in the strong wind, nor is he in the earthquake or the fire. He is in
the gentle air.[243] But the wind and the earthquake and the fire are
his precursors, and those who have experienced, and heard, and witnessed
these warnings should be all attention for the softer sound which is the
utterance of the divine Voice in the church.
There should be no surprise save the surprise of a great joy, the
admiring astonishment of finding out how good our God is, and what
marvellous treasures of things new and old our great mother, the
church, lays before us from time to time, as the Spirit of God moves
over the ocean of divine love, as it were incubating the creations of
the world of grace. We lie down in our certainty as the infant lies
down in its mother’s lap, and we rise on the wings of hope and faith
as the lark rises in the morning light, without the shadow of a doubt
that the lambient air will uphold the little fluttering wings with
which it carries its joyous song to the gates of heaven. Underneath us
are the “everlasting arms,”[244] and therefore we “dwell in safety and
alone”--alone as regards those outside the church, who cannot understand
our security, because they have never grasped the idea that, the voice
of the church being the voice of the third Person of the ever-blessed
Trinity to doubt the church is the same as to say that God is a liar.
If we have dwelt thus at length upon our certitude, and upon the
intellectual and spiritual repose it gives us, we have done so for the
purpose of making it absolutely impossible for our readers to suppose
that when we speak of a divergence between some of our mental impressions
and our received belief, we are in any degree insinuating that we have
not got all we require in the absolute and definite teaching of the
church; or that we have any cause to feel troubled about any question
which the church has left as an open question, and respecting which any
one of us individually may have been unable to arrive at a conclusion.
All we mean is this: that there are certain feelings, impressions, and
imaginings which we find it hard to silence and extinguish, difficult to
classify in accordance with our substantial belief, and which hang about
us like a sail on the mast of a vessel which the unwary crew have left
flapping in a dangerous gale.
The points in question may be various as the minds that contemplate them.
They may embrace a variety of subjects, and may assume different shapes
and aspects, according to the external circumstances under which they
present themselves, or to the color of our own thoughts and feelings at
the moment they are before us. Their field is so vast and their possible
variety so great that it would be vain for us to attempt to give even
a glance at them all. Indeed, the doing so is beyond our capacity, and
would be beyond the capacity of any one man. For who shall tell what is
fermenting in the thoughts of one even of his fellow-beings? He can
merely guess blindly at the souls of others from having dwelt in the
depths of his own, and knowing, as the one great fact, that all men are
brothers.
We are far, therefore, from intending to take up all the possible
questions not hedged in and limited and defined by dogmatic teaching,
or to try and help others to come to a conclusion on each. We might as
well attempt to count the sands of the sea-shore. All we are proposing
to ourselves for our own consolation, and, if possible, for that of our
readers, is to lay hold of certain facts which will give a clew to other
less certain facts, and, in short--if we may be allowed to resort to a
chemical term--to indicate certain solvents which will hold in solution
the little pebbles that lie in our path, and which might grow into great
stumbling-blocks had we not a strong dissolving power always at our
command.
It is self-evident that there is one knowledge which contains all other
knowledge, and that is the knowledge of God. As all things flow from
him, therefore all things are in him; and if we could see or know him,
we should know all the rest. That knowledge, that seeing, is the “light
of glory.” Its perfection is only compatible with the Beatific Vision,
which vision is impossible to mere man in his condition of _viator_, or
pilgrim.[245] It is the conclusion of faith just as broad noon is the
termination of darkness. But as faith is the leading up to the Beatific
Vision, to the light of glory, and to the knowledge of all things,
therefore in its degree is it the best substitute for sight--the dawning
of a more perfect day, and the beginning of knowledge. Consequently,
“faith is the evidence of things that appear not.” And as it is some of
the things “that appear not” which are puzzling and bewildering many of
us, let us lay hold of our faith and go whither it shall lead us.
We can in this life only know God mediately and obscurely by reason and
faith. But as the direct and clear intuition of God in the Beatific
Vision will include the knowledge of all else, so even our present
imperfect knowledge of him comprises in a certain sense all other and
lesser science, and is necessary to the highest knowledge of created
things.
To do this thoroughly we will investigate the occasional divergence
between our mental impressions, as we sometimes experience them, and our
received belief of the Divine Nature and characteristics.
In a burst of holy exultation S. Paul asks, “Who hath known the mind of
the Lord?”[246]--not as though regretting his ignorance, but rather with
the feelings of one who, having suddenly come upon an evidently priceless
treasure, exclaims, Who can tell what wealth now lies before us?
Yes, indeed! we know him well while we know him but imperfectly. There
is more to know than we can guess at, but our hearts are too narrow to
hold it. And yet sometimes how full to overflowing has that knowledge
seemed! Have we not followed him from the cradle to the grave, in that
sweet brotherhood which he has established with each one of us? Have
we not lost ourselves in far-reaching thoughts of how, and where he was
when his brotherhood with us was not an accomplished fact, but only an
ever-enduring divine intention co-equal with his own eternal existence--a
phase of that very existence, for ever present to the Divine Idea, though
not yet subjected to the conditions of time? We have thought of him as
in the bosom of the Father in a way in which, wonderful to relate, he
never can be again in the bosom of the Father. A something has passed in
respect to the existence of God himself, and actually made a difference
in the extrinsic relations of the divine Being.
There was an eternity in which the Son of God--he whom we most seem to
know of the three Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity--dwelt in the bosom
of the Father unconnected with his sacred humanity. There was an eternity
when his name was not Jesus, when he was the Son of God only, and not the
Son of man.
We are expressing what everybody knows who is a Christian--a platitude
almost, and yet so full of wonder that, unless we have thoroughly gone
into it and sifted it, we have not ransacked half the riches of what we
can and may know of the “mind of the Lord.”
In truth, we are very apt to be repelled by this contemplation. There is
something dreary to us in the eternity when the Brother of our race and
the Spouse of our souls was only the everlasting Begotten of the Father,
dwelling in that inscrutable eternity to which we, as the creatures of
time, seem to have no link. Our thoughts and imaginations are shackled
by the conditions of our own being. Yesterday we were not. And so all
before yesterday seems like a blank to us. To-morrow we know will be--if
not for us in this identical state, yet certainly for us in some other
state. But that dim yesterday, which never began and of which no history
can be written, no details given, only the great, grand, inarticulated
statement made that the QUI EST, the “I am,” filled it--this appalls
us. Can nothing be done to mitigate this stupendous though beautiful
horror? Is there no corner into which our insignificance can creep, that
so we may look out upon those unknown depths without feeling that we
are plunging into a fathomless ocean, there to sink in blank darkness
and inanition? Surely the God of the past (as from our point of view we
reckon the past) should not be so appallingly unknown to us who have
our beloved Jesus in the present, and who look forward to the Beatific
Vision of the whole blessed Trinity with trembling hope in the future.
But before we can in any degree overcome the stupor with which we think
of the backward-flowing ages of eternity, we must endeavor more fully to
realize the nature of time.
We are all apt to speak of time as a period; whereas it is more properly
a state.
The generality of persons, in thinking of time in relation to eternity,
represent to themselves a long, long ago, blind past, and then an
interminable but partially appreciable future, and time lying as a sort
of sliced-out period between the two, which slice is attached to the
eternity behind and the eternity in front, and about which we have the
comfort and satisfaction of being able to write history and chronicle
events, either on a large or a small scale. We treat it as we should do a
mountain of gold, which we coin into money, and we conveniently cut it up
into ages, years, months, days, and hours. It is our nature so to do, and
we cannot do otherwise. It is the condition of our being. But as it will
not be always the condition of our being, there are few things we are
more constantly exhorted to than the attempt to raise our imagination,
or rather our faith, as much as possible out of these conventional and
arbitrary trammels, and dispose ourselves for that other state which is
our ultimate end, and where there are no years and no days.
In point of fact, time is only an imperfection of our being--an
absolutely necessary imperfection, because our being is finite, and
our state is a probationary state; and probation implies not only that
succession which is necessary in every finite being, but change and
movement in respect to things which are permanent in a more perfect
state. Our condition in time has not inaptly been compared to that of a
man looking through the small aperture of a camera-obscura, which only
permits him to behold a section of what is passing. The figures appear
and vanish. But the window is thrown wide open in eternity, and he sees
the whole at once. He is, therefore, under a disadvantage so long as he
is in the camera-obscura, viewing the landscape through a small hole.
And this is our position, judging of eternity through the aperture of
time. Even now we have a wonderful power of adding to our time, or of
shortening it, without any reference to clocks or sun-dials, and which,
if we think about it, will help to show us that time is a plastic
accident of our being.
When we have been very much absorbed, we have taken no note of time,
and the hours have flown like minutes. During that interval we have,
as it were, made our own time, and modified our condition with
reference to time by our own act. Time, therefore, is plastic. Were we
by some extraordinary and exceptional power to accomplish in one day
all that actually we now take a year to effect, but at the same time
intellectually to retain our present perception of the succession of
events, our life would not really have been shorter for the want of
those three hundred and sixty-four days which we had been able to do
without. Life is shorter now than it was in the days of the patriarchs.
But possibly the perception of life is not shortened. Nay, rather,
from the rapidity with which events are now permitted to succeed each
other, partially owing to the progress of science and to man’s increased
dominion over material force, the probability is that our lives are not
abstractedly much, if at all, more brief than Adam’s nine hundred and
thirty years. All things now are hastening to the end. They have always
been hastening. But there is the added impetus of the past; and that
increases with every age in the world’s history.
Now, let us imagine life, or a portion of life, without thought--that is,
without the act of thinking. Immediately we find that it is next door
to _no thing_, to no time, and no life. We can only measure life with
any accuracy by the amount of thought which has filled it--that is, by
the quantity of our intellectual and spiritual power which we have been
able to bring to the small aperture in the camera-obscura, by which to
contemplate the ever-flowing eternity which lies beyond, and cut it up
into the sections we call time.
Another example will show us how plastic is the nature of time. Take
the life of an animal. We are inclined to give the largest reasonable
and possible importance to the brute creation. It is an open question,
in which we see great seeds of future development, all tending to
increased glory to the Creator and to further elucidation of creative
love. Nevertheless, it is obvious that brutes perceive only or chiefly
by moments. There is, as compared with ourselves, little or no sequence
in their perceptions. There is no cumulative knowledge. They are without
deliberate reflection, even where they are not without perception of
relations and circumstances, past or future. Consequently, they are more
rigorously subjects to time than ourselves. Therefore, when we deprive
an animal of life, we deprive him of a remainder of time that is equal
to little more than no time, in proportion to the degree in which his
power of filling time with perception is less than our own.[247] All
we have said tends to prove that the existence of time is a relative
existence; it is the form or phase of our own finite being. It is an
aspect of eternity--the aspect which is consistent with our present
condition. For time is the measure of successive existence in created
and finite beings. As finite spirits we cannot escape from this limit of
successive existence, any more than a body can escape from the limit of
locality and finite movement in grace. Eternal existence is the entire
possession of life, which is illimitable, in such a perfect manner that
all succession in duration is excluded. This is possible only in God
himself, who is alone most pure and perfect act, and therefore is at once
all he can be, without change or movement. But the created spirit must
ever live by a perpetual movement of increase in its duration, because it
is on every side finite. Time, therefore, will continue to exist while
creatures continue to exist.
Having arrived at this conclusion we cannot refuse ourselves the
satisfaction of pointing out one obvious deduction--namely, that if
time has, in itself, only a relative existence, it is impossible it can
ever put an end to the existence of anything else. It is inconceivable
that the _non est_ can absorb, exterminate, annihilate, or obliterate
any one single thing that has ever had one second of real existence,
of permitted being, of sentient, or even of insentient, life. God can
annihilate, if he so will (and we do not think he will), but time
cannot. Time can hide and put away. It can slip between us and the only
reality, which is eternity; that is the condition of God, the QUI EST.
Wait awhile, and time will have, as it were, spread or overflowed into
eternity. It will hide nothing from our view. It will be “rent in two
from the top to the bottom,” from the beginning to the end, like the
veil of the Temple, which is its symbol. And then will appear all that
it has hitherto seemed, but only seemed, to distinguish. We shall find
it all in the inner recesses of eternity. What cause, in point of fact,
have we for supposing that anything which _is_ shall cease to exist?
Why, because we no longer behold certain objects, do we imagine them to
be really lost for ever? Is this a reasonable supposition on the part
of beings who are conscious that once they themselves were not, and yet
believe that they always shall be? Why should the mere diversity in other
existences make us apprehend that the missing is also the lost, and that
we have any substantial cause for doubting that all which exists will
go on existing? Do we anywhere see symptoms of annihilation? It is true
we see endless mutations, but those very mutations are a guarantee to
us of the continuousness of being. All material things change: but they
only change. They do not ever in any case go out and cease to be. If
this be true of merely material things, how absolutely true must it be
of the immaterial; and how more than probable of that which is partly
one and partly the other, of that far lower nature of the brutes, which
have a principle of life in them inferior to ours and superior to the
plants, and of which, since we do not believe their sensations to be the
result of certain fortuitous atoms that have fashioned themselves blindly
after an inexorable law, and independently of an intelligent Lawgiver,
we may reasonably predicate that they too will have a future and, in
its proper inferior order, an advanced existence. Everywhere there is
growth--through the phases of time into the portals of eternity.
The idea in the eternal Mind, of all essences, the least as well as the
greatest, was, like the Mind that held it, eternal--that is, exempt
from all limit of succession. The past, present, and future are the
progressive modes of existence and of our own perceptions rather than
the properties of the essences themselves. Those essences had a place in
the Eternal Idea; they occupy an actual place as an actual existence in
the phases of time, and they go on in all probability--may we not say
in all certainty?--in the endlessness of the Creator’s intention. Let
no one misunderstand this as implying that matter was eternal in any
other sense than its essence being an object of the idea of the eternal
God, it was always clearly present to the eternal Mind. Its actuality,
as we know it, dates from this creation of the crude, chaotic mass.
But once formed, and then fashioned, and finally animated, we can have
no pretence for supposing that any part of it will ever cease to be.
Nor can we have any solid reason for supposing that what has once been
endowed with sentient life will ever be condemned to fall back into the
all but infinitely lower form of mere organic matter, any more than we
have reason to suppose that at some future period organic matter will
be reduced to inorganic matter, and that out of this beautiful creation
it will please God to resolve chaos back again, either the whole or in
any one the smallest part. We have nothing to do with the difficulties
of the question. They are difficulties entirely of detail, and not of
principle; and they concern us no more than it concerns us to be able
to state how many animalcula it took to heave up the vast sierras of
the western hemisphere. The details may well puzzle us, and we cannot
venture on the merest suggestion. But the principle is full of hope,
joy, and security, which in itself is a presumption in its favor. If we
would but believe how God values the work of his own hands; if we would
but try to realize how intense is creative love, what much larger and
deeper views we should have of the future of all creation, and of the
glory that is prepared for us! Even the old heathen religions began by
taking larger and more accurate measure of these questions (though they
necessarily ended in error) than too many of us do with all the light of
the Gospel thrown upon them. The animism of the heathens, which makes no
distinction between animate and inanimate existence, but lends a soul
to each alike, had in it a sort of loving and hopeful reverence for
creation which is often wanting to us who alone truly know the Creator.
In their blind groping after faith it led them to fetichism, and further
on, as a fuller development of the same notion, to pantheism, and then
to the ever-renewed and quite endless incarnations of Buddha. But these
errors took their rise originally from a respectful and tender love of
that beautiful though awful nature which man found lying all around him;
external to himself, yet linked to himself, and beneath the folds of
which he hoped to find the hidden deity.
If these reflections have at all enabled us to understand the nature
of time, and to shake off some of the unreasonable importance we lend
to it in our imaginations--making of it a sort of lesser rival to
eternity, fashioning it into an actual, existing thing, as if it were an
attribute of God himself, instead of being, what it is, a state or phase
imposed upon us, and not in any way affecting him--we shall have done
much to facilitate the considerations we wish to enlarge upon. Eternity
is “perpetually instantaneous.” It is the _nunc stans_ of theology.
Time, on the contrary, is the past, present, and future of our human
condition--the _nunc fluens_ of theology.
With this truth well rooted in our minds, we will now turn to the
investigation of some of those impressions to which we referred at the
beginning of this section, and endeavor to throw light upon them from out
of the additional knowledge we acquire of the nature and characteristics
of the divine Being through the simple process of clearing away some
of our false impressions with respect to time. We had in our modes of
thought more or less hemmed in the Eternal, with our human sense of time,
and subjected even him to the narrowing process of a past, present, and
future. Now we are about to think of ourselves only in that position, and
to contemplate him in eternity, dealing with us through the medium of
time, but distinctly with a reference to eternity, and only apparently
imposing on himself the conditions of time in order to bring himself, as
it were, on a level with us in his dealings with us.
Strange as it may appear, out of the depths of our stupidity we have
fabricated a difficulty to ourselves in his very condescensions, and,
looking back from our present to the past, we find ourselves puzzled at
certain divers revelations of God made to mankind in gone-by times; just
as, in the weakness of our faith, we are sometimes troubled with doubts
about our own condition, and that of those about us, in that future which
must come, and which may not be far off to any one of us.
The God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob--is he really quite the same as
our own God? our God of the womb of Mary, of the manger, of the wayside
places in Palestine, and Mount Calvary, and now, of the silken-curtained
Tabernacle, and the Blessed Eucharist, and the dear, ineffable moments of
silent prayer--is he the same?
Of course we know that, literally and absolutely, he is the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Nevertheless, he appears to us
under such different aspects that we find ourselves unintentionally
contemplating the Old Testament as a revelation of the divine Being with
very different emotions from those with which we contemplate him in the
New Testament, and this, again, differing widely from our view of him
in the church. It may be a mere matter of feeling, perhaps; but it is
nevertheless a feeling which materially influences our form of devotion,
the vigor of our faith, and the power of our hope and love.
If we could take in all these different impressions and amalgamate them;
if we could group them together, or make them like the several rays of
light directed into one focus, we should obtain a more complete and a
more influential knowledge of God than we can do while we seem rather to
be wandering out of one view of him into another, as if we walked from
chamber to chamber and closed each door behind us.
Now, the only way we can arrive at this is by bearing in mind that the
acts of God in governing the world are not momentary and solitary facts,
but continuous acts, or rather one continuous act.
Our difficulty lies in producing a visibly satisfactory harmony in our
own minds as regards the acts of God, and thus (though for our own
appreciation of them, they are to us broken up into fragments, or, in
other terms, into separate facts) arriving at the same mental attitude
towards them as though we saw them as one continuous act.
It will aid us in our search if we, first of all, endeavor to qualify
that act.
Its very continuity, its perpetual instantaneousness, must essentially
affect its character and make the definition no complex matter. It is an
act of love, and it is revealed as such in the whole creation, and in the
way God has let himself down to us and is drawing us up unto himself.
There have been many apparent modifications, but there have been no
actual contradictions, in this characteristic; for even the existence of
evil works round to greater good, to a degree sufficiently obvious to us
for us to know that where it is less obvious it must nevertheless follow
the same law. For law is everywhere; because God is law, though law is
not God.
Modern unbelief substitutes law for God, and then thinks it has done away
with him. To us who believe it makes no difference how far back in the
long continuous line of active forces we may find the original and divine
Author of all force. It is nothing but the weakness of our imagination
which makes it more difficult to count by millions than by units.
What does it matter to our faith through how many developments the
condition of creation, as we now see it all around us, may have passed,
when we know that the first idea sprang from the great Source of all law,
and that with him the present state is as much one continuous act as the
past state and the future state? You may trace back the whole material
universe, if you will, to the one first molecule of chaotic matter; but
so long as I find that first molecule in the hand of my Creator (and I
defy you to put it anywhere else), it is enough for my faith.
You do not make him one whit the less my Creator and my God because
an initial law or force, with which he then stamped it, has worked
it out to what I now see it. You may increase the apparent distance
between the world as it is actually and the divine Fount from whence
it sprang; you may seem to remove the creative love which called the
universe into existence further off, by thus lengthening the chain of
what you call developments; but, after all, these developments are for
ever bridged over by the ulterior intentions of the Triune Deity when
he said,“Let us make man in our image,” and by the fact that space and
time are mere accidents as viewed in relation to the QUI EST. They are,
so to speak, divinely-constituted conventionalities, through which the
Divinity touches upon our human condition, but which in no way affect
the Divine Essence as it is in itself. On the contrary, in the broken-up
developments and evolutions which you believe you trace, and which you
want to make into a blind law which shall supersede a divine Creator, I
see only the pulsations of time breaking up the perpetually instantaneous
act of God, just as I see the pulsations of light in the one unbroken
ray. The act of God passes through the medium of time before it reaches
our ken; and the ray of light passes through the medium of air before it
strikes our senses; but both are continuous and instantaneous.
If we have in any degree succeeded in establishing this to our
satisfaction, it will become easier for us to estimate the acts of God as
they come to us through the pulsations of Time; because we shall be able
to bear in mind that they must be in a measure interpreted to us by the
time through which they reach us. They were modified by the time in which
they were revealed, much as the ray is modified by the substance through
which it forces its way to us.
Now, we arrive at the causes of the different impressions we receive
of the nature and characteristics of the divine Being. They are a
consequence of the different epochs in which we contemplate him. They are
the pulsations appropriate to that epoch. Other pulsations belong to our
portion of time, and to our consequent view of the divine Being; and so
on and on, till time shall be swallowed up in Eternity, and the Beatific
Vision burst upon us.
TO BE CONTINUED.
MISSIONS IN MAINE FROM 1613 TO 1854.
“THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS IS THE SEED OF THE CHURCH.”
To the historical student the following paper can have but trifling
value, as the writer makes no pretension to originality of matter, and
seeks but to bring within the grasp of the general reader, in a condensed
form, the gist of many books, a large number of which are rare, and
almost inaccessible.
It is hoped, however, that there are many persons who will read with
interest a paper thus compiled from undoubted authorities, who have
neither the time nor the inclination to consult these authorities for
themselves. These persons will learn with wonder of the self-abnegation
of the French priests who went forth among the savages with their lives
in their hands, with but one thought in their brains, one wish in their
hearts, one prayer on their lips--the evangelization of the Indians.
As Shea says: “The word Christianity was, in those days, identical with
Catholicity. The religion to be offered to the New World was that of the
Church of Rome, which church was free from any distinct national feeling,
and in extending her boundaries carried her own language and rites, not
those of any particular state.”
The Franciscan, Dominican, and Jesuit bore the heat and burden of
the day, and reaped the most bountiful harvest in that part of North
America now known as the State of Maine; and the first mission in that
neighborhood was planted at Mt. Desert, and called St. Sauveur. A hotel
at Bar Harbor is so named, but not one in a hundred of the numerous
guests who cross its threshold knows the reason of the French name of
their temporary abiding-place.
This reason, and the facts connected therewith, we shall now proceed to
give to our readers. In 1610 Marie de Médicis was Regent of France. The
king had been assassinated in the streets of Paris in the previous month
of May. Sully was dismissed from court. All was confusion and dissension.
Twelve years of peace and the judicious rule of the king had paid the
national debt and filled the treasury.
The famous Father Cotton, confessor of the late king, was still powerful
at court. He laid before the queen the facts that Henri IV. had been
deeply interested in the establishment of the Jesuit order in Acadia, and
had evinced a tangible proof of that interest in the bestowal of a grant
of two thousand livres per annum.
The ambitious queen listened indulgently, with a heart softened,
possibly, by recent sorrows, and consented to receive the son of the
Baron Poutrincourt, who had just returned from the New World, where he
had left his father with Champlain. Father Cotton ushered the handsome
stripling into the presence of the stately queen and her attendant
ladies. Young Biencourt at first stood silent and abashed, but, as the
ladies gathered about him and plied him with questions, soon forgot
himself and told wondrous tales of the dusky savages--of their strange
customs and of their eagerness for instruction in the true faith. He
displayed the baptismal register of the converts of Father Fléche, and
implored the sympathy and aid of these glittering dames, and not in vain;
for, fired with pious emulation, they tore the flashing jewels from their
ears and throats. Among these ladies was one whose history and influence
were so remarkable that we must translate for our readers some account of
her from the Abbé de Choisy.
Antoinette de Pons, Marquise de Guercheville had been famed throughout
France, not only for her grace and beauty, but for qualities more rare at
the court where her youth had been passed.
When Antoinette was La Duchesse de Rochefoucauld, the king begged her to
accept a position near the queen. “Madame,” he said, as he presented her
to Marie de Médicis, “I give you a Lady of Honor who is a lady of honor
indeed.”
Twenty years had come and gone. The youthful beauty of the _marquise_ had
faded, but she was fair and stately still, and one of the most brilliant
ornaments of the brilliant court; and yet she was not altogether worldly.
Again a widow and without children, she had become sincerely religious,
and threw herself heart and soul into the American missions, and was
restrained only by the positive commands of her mistress the queen from
herself seeking the New World.
Day and night she thought of these perishing souls. On her knees in her
oratory she prayed for the Indians, and contented herself not with this
alone. From the queen and from the ladies of the court she obtained
money, and jewels that could be converted into money. Charlevoix tells
us that the only difficulty was to restrain her ardor within reasonable
bounds.
Two French priests, Paul Biard and Enémond Massé, were sent to Dieppe,
there to take passage for the colonies. The vessel was engaged by
Poutrincourt and his associates, and was partially owned by two Huguenot
merchants, who persistently and with indignation refused to permit the
embarkation of the priests. No entreaties or representations availed, and
finally La Marquise bought out the interest of the two merchants in the
vessel and cargo, and transferred it to the priests as a fund for their
support.
At last the fathers set sail, on the 26th of January, 1611. Their
troubles, however, were by no means over; for Biencourt, a mere lad,
clothed in a little brief authority--manly, it is true, beyond his
years--hampered them at every turn. They arrived at Port Royal in June,
after a hazardous and tempestuous voyage, having seen, as Father Biard
writes, icebergs taller and larger than the Church of Notre Dame.
The fathers became discouraged by the constant interference of young
Biencourt, and determined to return to Europe, unless they could, with
Mme. de Guercheville’s aid, found a mission colony in some other spot.
Their zealous protectress obtained from De Monts--who, though a
Protestant, had erected six years before the first cross in Maine at
the mouth of the Kennebec--a transfer of all his claims to the lands of
Acadia, and soon sent out a small vessel with forty colonists, commanded
by La Saussaye, a nobleman, and having on board two Jesuit priests,
Fathers du Thet and Quentin.
It was on the 1st of March, 1613, that this vessel left Honfleur, laden
with supplies, and followed by prayers and benedictions.
On the 16th of May La Saussaye reached Port Royal, and there took on
board Fathers Massé and Biard, and then set sail for the Penobscot. A
heavy fog arose and encompassed them about; if it lifted for a moment,
it was but to show them a white gleam of distant breakers or a dark,
overhanging cliff.
“Our prayers were heard,” wrote Biard, “and at night the stars came out,
and the morning sun devoured the fogs, and we found ourselves lying in
Frenchmans Bay opposite Mt. Desert.”
L’Isle des Monts Déserts had been visited and so named by Champlain in
1604, and Frenchman’s Bay gained its title from a singular incident that
had there taken place in the same spring.
De Monts had broken up his winter encampment at St. Croix. Among his
company was a young French ecclesiastic, Nicholas d’Aubri, who, to
gratify his curiosity in regard to the products of the soil in this new
and strange country, insisted on being set ashore for a ramble of a few
hours. He lost his way, and the boatmen, after an anxious search, were
compelled to leave him. For eighteen days the young student wandered
through woods, subsisting on berries and the roots of the plant known as
Solomon’s Seal. He, however, kept carefully near the shore, and at the
end of this time he distinguished a sail in the distance. Signalling
this, he was fortunate enough to be taken off by the same crew that had
landed him. On these bleak shores the colonists decided to make their
future home, and, with singular infelicity, selected them as the site of
the new colony. It is inconceivable how Father Biard, who had already
spent some time in the New World, could have failed to suggest to La
Saussaye and to their patroness that a colony, to be a success, must be
not only in a spot easily accessible to France, but that a small force of
armed men was imperative; for, to Biard’s own knowledge, the English had
already seized several French vessels in that vicinity.
On these frowning shores La Saussaye landed, and erected a cross, and
displayed the escutcheon of Mme. de Guercheville; the fathers offered the
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and gave to the little settlement the name of
St. Sauveur.
Four tents--the gift of the queen--shone white in the soft spring
sunshine. The largest of these was used as a chapel, the decorations of
which, with the silver vessels for the celebration of the Mass and the
rich vestments, were presented by Henriette d’Entraigues, Marquise de
Verneuil.
The colonists labored night and day to raise their little fort and to
land their supplies. Their toil was nearly over, the vessel, ready for
sea, rode at anchor, when a sudden and violent storm arose.
This storm had been felt twenty-four hours earlier off the Isles of
Shoals by a fishing vessel commanded by one Samuel Argall. Thick fogs
bewildered him, and a strong wind drove him to the northeast; and when
the weather cleared, Argall found himself off the coast of Maine. Canoes
came out like flocks of birds from each small bay. The Indians climbed
the ship’s side, and greeted the new-comers with such amazing bows and
flourishes that Argall, with his native acuteness, felt certain that they
could have learned them only from the French, who could not be far away.
Argall plied the Indians with cunning questions, and soon learned of the
new settlement. He resolved to investigate farther, and set sail for the
wild heights of Mt. Desert. With infinite patience he crept along through
the many islands, and, rounding the Porcupines, saw a small ship anchored
in the bay. At the same moment the French saw the English ship bearing
down upon them “swifter than an arrow,” writes Father Biard, “with every
sail set, and the English flags streaming from mast-head and stern.”
La Saussaye was within the fort, Lieut. la Motte on board with Father du
Thet, an ensign, and a sergeant. Argall bore down amid a bewildering din
of drums and trumpets. “Fire!” cried La Motte. Alas! the gunner was on
shore. Father du Thet seized and applied the match.
Another scathing discharge of musketry, and the brave priest lay dead. He
had his wish; for the day before he left France he prayed with uplifted
hands that he might not return, but perish on that holy enterprise. He
was buried the following day at the foot of the rough cross he had helped
to erect.
La Motte, clear-sighted enough to see the utter uselessness of any
farther attempt at defence, surrendered, and Argall took possession of
the vessel and of La Saussaye’s papers, from among which he abstracted
the royal commission. On La Saussaye’s return from the woods, where he
had retreated with the colonists, he was met by Argall, who informed him
that the country belonged to his master, King James, and finally asked
to see his commission. In vain did the French nobleman search for it.
Argall’s courtesy changed to wrath; he accused the officer of piracy, and
ordered the settlement to be given up to pillage, but offered to take
any of the settlers who had a trade back to Virginia with him, promising
them protection. Argall counted, however, without his host; for on
reaching Jamestown the governor swore that the French priests should be
hung. Useless were Argall’s remonstrances, and finally, seeing no other
way to save the lives of the fathers, he produced the commission and
acknowledged his stratagem.
The wrath of Sir Thomas Dale was unappeased, but the lives of the priests
were, of course, safe. He despatched Argall with two additional ships
back to Mt. Desert, with orders to cut down the cross and level the
defences.
Father Biard was on board, as well as Father Massé; they, with refined
cruelty, being sent to witness the destruction of their hopes.
This work of destruction completed, Argall set sail for Virginia. Again
a storm arose, and the vessel on which were the ecclesiastics was driven
to the Azores. Here the Jesuits, who had been so grossly ill-treated, had
but a few words to say to be avenged. The captain of the vessel was not
without uneasiness, and entreated the priests to remain in concealment
when the vessel was visited by the authorities. This visit over, the
English purchased all they needed, and weighed anchor for England.
Arrived there, a new difficulty occurred; for there was no commission
to show. The captain was treated as a pirate, thrown into prison, and
released only on the testimony of the Jesuit Fathers, who thus returned
good for evil.
Father Biard hastened to France, where he became professor of theology at
Lyons, and died at Avignon on the 17th of November, 1622. Father Massé
returned to Canada, where he labored without ceasing until his death, in
1646.
With the destruction of St. Sauveur, the pious designs of Mme. de
Guercheville seem to have perished. At any rate, the most diligent
research fails to find her name again in the annals of that time.
Probably the troubled state of France made it impossible for her to
provide the sinews of war, or of evangelization. Nevertheless, the good
seed was planted, and zeal for the mission cause again revived in Europe,
particularly in the Society of Jesus. Young men left court and camp to
share the privations and life of self-denial of the missionaries. Even
the convents partook of the general enthusiasm, and Ursuline Nuns came to
show the Indians Christianity in daily life, ministering to the sick and
instructing the young.
Many years after the melancholy failure of the mission at Mt. Desert, an
apparent accident recalled the Jesuit Fathers to the coast of Maine.
In 1642 there was a mission at Sillery, on the St. Lawrence, where had
been gathered together a large number of Indian converts, who lived, with
their families about them, in peace and harmony under the watchful care
of the kind fathers. Among these converts was a chief who, to rescue
some of his tribe who had been taken prisoners, started off through the
pathless wilderness, and finally reached the English at Coussinoe, now
known as Augusta, on the Kennebec.
There the Indian convert so extolled the Christian faith and its mighty
promises that he took back with him several of the tribe. These were
baptized at Sillery, and became faithful servants of our Lord Jesus
Christ. In consequence of the entreaties of these converts, Father
Gabriel Drouillettes was sent to the lonely Kennebec.
Here he built a chapel of fir-trees in a place now known as Norridgewock,
a lovely, secluded spot. Some years before Father Biard had been there
for a few weeks, so that the Indians were not totally unprepared to
receive religious instruction. Father Drouillettes was greatly blessed
in his teaching, and converted a large number, inspiring them with a
profound love for the Catholic faith, which the English, twenty years
before, had failed to do for the Protestant religion. He taught them
simple prayers, and translated for their use, into their own dialect,
several hymns. The savages even learned to sing, and it was not long
before the solemn strains of the _Dies Iræ_ awakened strange echoes in
the primeval forests.
Even the English, biassed as they were against the Catholics, watched
the good accomplished by the faithful servant of the great Master, and
learned to regard his coming as a great blessing, though at this very
time the stern Puritans at Plymouth were enacting cruel laws against his
order.
When the Indians went to Moosehead Lake to hunt and fish, Father
Drouillettes went with them, watching over his flock with unswerving
solicitude. But the day of his summons to Quebec came, and a general
feeling of despair overwhelmed his converts. He went, and the Assumption
Mission was deserted; for by that name, as it was asked for on that day,
was this mission always designated.
Year after year the Abnakis--for so were called the aborigines of
Maine--sent deputations to Quebec to entreat the return of their beloved
priest, but in vain; for the number of missionaries was at that time very
limited. Finally, in 1650, Father Drouillettes set out with a party on
the last day of August for the tiresome eight days’ march through the
wilderness; the party lost their way, their provisions were gone, and it
was not until twenty-four days afterwards that they reached Norridgewock.
From a letter written at this time by Father Drouillettes we transcribe
the following: “In spite of all that is painful and crucifying to nature
in these missions, there are also great joys and consolations. More
plenteous than I can describe are those I feel, to see that the seed of
the Gospel I scattered here four years ago, in land which for so many
centuries has lain fallow, or produced only thorns and brambles, already
bears fruit so worthy of the Lord.” Nothing could exceed the veneration
and affection of the Indians for their missionary; and when an Englishman
vehemently accused the French priest of slandering his nation, the chiefs
hurried to Augusta, and warned the authorities to take heed and not
attack their father even in words.
The following spring Father Drouillettes was sent to a far-distant
station, and years elapsed before he returned to Quebec, where he died in
1681, at the age of eighty-eight.
About this time two brothers, Vincent and Jacques Bigot, men of rank
and fortune, left their homes in sunny France to share the toil and
privations of life in the New World. They placed themselves and their
fortunes in the hands of the superior at Quebec, and were sent to
labor in the footprints of Father Drouillettes. During their faithful
ministrations at Norridgewock, the chapel built by their predecessor
was burned by the English, but was rebuilt in 1687 by English workmen
sent from Boston, according to treaty stipulations. And now appears upon
the scene the stately form of one of the greatest men of that age; but
before we attempt to bring before our readers the character and acts of
Sebastian Râle, we must beg them to turn from Norridgewock, the scene
of his labors and martyrdom, to the little village of Castine. For in
1688 Father Thury, a priest of the diocese of Quebec, a man of tact and
ability, had gathered about him a band of converts at Panawauski, on the
Penobscot. This settlement was protected by the Baron Saint-Castine.
This Saint-Castine was a French nobleman and a soldier who originally
went to Canada in command of a regiment. The regiment was disbanded, and
Saint-Castine’s disappointed ambition and a heart sore from domestic
trials decided him, rather than return to France, to plunge into the
wilderness, and there, far from kindred and nation, create for himself a
new home.
After a while the baron married a daughter of one of the sachems of
the Penobscot Indians, and became himself a sagamore of the tribe. The
descendants of this marriage hold at the present day some portion of the
Saint-Castine lands in Normandy.
Twice was the French baron driven from his home by the Dutch; twice
was the simple chapel burned by them. In 1687 Sir Edmund Andros was
appointed governor of New England, and in the following year, sailing
eastward in the frigate _Rose_, he anchored opposite the little fort and
primitive home of Saint-Castine. The baron retreated with the small band
of settlers to the woods. Andros, being a Catholic, touched nothing in
the chapel, but carried off everything else in the village. In 1703 the
war known as Queen Anne’s war broke out. Again Saint-Castine was attacked
by the English, and his wife and children carried off as prisoners, but
were soon after exchanged. From this time the name of Baron Saint-Castine
appears in all the annals of the time, as the courageous defender of his
faith and of its priests. Father Râle, at Norridgewock, turned to him for
counsel and aid, and never turned in vain. From Castine on to Mt. Desert
the shores are full of historical interest; for there were many French
settlements thereabouts, the attention of that nation having been drawn
to that especial locality by a grant of land which M. Cardillac obtained
of Louis XIV. in April, 1691. This grant was evidently made to confirm
possession. A certain Mme. de Grégoire proved herself to be a lineal
descendant of Cardillac, and in 1787 acquired a partial confirmation of
the original grant.
Relics of the French settlers are constantly turned up by the plough in
the vicinity of Castine, and in 1840 a quantity of French gold pieces
were found; but of infinitely more interest was the discovery there, in
1863, of a copper plate ten inches in length and eight in width. The
finder, knowing nothing of the value of this piece of metal, cut off a
portion to repair his boat. This fragment was, however, subsequently
recovered. The letters on the plate are unquestionably abbreviations of
the following inscription: “1648, 8 Junii, S. Frater Leo Parisiensis, in
Capuccinorum Missione, posuit hoc fundamentum in honorem nostræ Dominæ
Sanctæ Spei”--1648, 8th of June, Holy Friar Leo of Paris, Capuchin
missionary, laid this foundation in honor of Our Lady of Holy Hope.
In regard to this Father Leo the most diligent research fails to find
any other trace. The plate, however, was without doubt placed in the
foundation of a Catholic chapel--probably the one within the walls of the
old French fort. Father Sebastian Râle sailed in 1689 for America. After
remaining for nearly two years in Quebec, he went thence to Norridgewock.
He found the Abnakis nearly all converted, and at once applied himself to
learning their dialect. To this work he brought his marvellous patience
and energy, and all his wondrous insight into human nature. He began his
dictionary, and erected a chapel on the spot known now as Indian Old
Point. This chapel he supplied with all the decorations calculated to
engage the imagination and fix the wandering attention of the untutored
savage. The women contended with holy emulation in the embellishment of
the sanctuary. They made mats of the soft and brightly-tinted plumage
of the forest birds and of the white-breasted sea-gulls. They brought
offerings of huge candles, manufactured from the fragrant wax of the
bay-berry, with which the chapel was illuminated. A couple of nuns from
Montreal made a brief sojourn at Norridgewock, that they might teach the
Indian women to sew and to make a kind of lace with which to adorn the
altar. Busied with his dictionary and with his flock, Father Râle thus
passed the most peaceful days of his life; but this blessed quiet ended
only too soon.
In 1705 a party of English, under the command of a Capt. Hilton, burst
from out the forest, attacking the little village from all sides at once,
finishing by burning the chapel and every hut.
About the same time the governor-general of New England sent to the lower
part of the Kennebec the ablest of the Boston divines to instruct the
Indian children. As Baxter’s (the missionary) salary depended on his
success, he neglected no means that could attract.
For two months he labored in vain. His caresses and little gifts were
thrown away; for he made not one convert.
Father Râle wrote to Baxter that his neophytes were good Christians, but
far from able in disputes.
This same letter, which was of some length, challenged the Protestant
clergyman to a discussion. Baxter, after a long delay, sent a brief
reply, in Latin so bad that the learned priest says it was impossible to
understand it.
In 1717 the Indian chiefs held a council. The governor of New England
offered them an English and an Indian Bible, and Mr. Baxter as their
expounder.
The Abnakis refused them one and all, and elected to adhere to their
Catholic faith, saying: “All people love their own priests! Your Bibles
we do not care for, and God has already sent us teachers.”
Thus years passed on in monotonous labor. The only relaxation permitted
to himself by Father Râle was the work on his dictionary. The converts
venerated their priest; their keen eyes and quick instincts saw the
sincerity of his life, the reality of his affection for them, and
recognized his self-denial and generosity. They went to him with their
cares and their sorrows, with their simple griefs and simpler pleasures.
He listened with unaffected sympathy and interest. No envious rival, no
jealous competitor, no heretical teacher, disturbed the relations between
pastor and flock. So, too, was it but natural that they should look to
him for advice when they gathered about their council-fires.
The wrongs which the Eastern Indians were constantly enduring at the
hands of the English settlers kindled to a living flame the smouldering
hatred in their hearts, which they sought every opportunity of wreaking
in vengeance on their foe. Thus, like lightning on the edge of the
horizon, they hovered on the frontier, making daring forays on the farms
of the settlers.
It was not unnatural that the English, bristling with prejudices
against the French, and still more against Catholics, should have seen
fit to look on Father Râle as the instigator of all these attacks,
forgetting--what is undeniably true--that Father Râle’s converts were
milder and kinder and more Christian-like than any of their Indian
neighbors. The good father was full of concern when he heard that a
fierce and warlike tribe, who had steadily resisted all elevating
influences, were about settling within a day’s journey of Norridgewock.
He feared lest his children should be led away by pernicious examples; so
he with difficulty persuaded some of the strangers to enter the chapel,
and to be present at some of the imposing ceremonies of the mother
church. At the close of the service he addressed them in simple words,
and thus concluded:
“Let us not separate, that some may go one way and some another. Let
us all go to heaven. It is our country, and the place to which we are
invited by the sole Master of life, of whom I am but the interpreter.”
The reply of the Indians was evasive; but it was evident that an
impression was made, and in the autumn they sent to him to say that if he
would come to them they would receive his teachings.
Father Râle gladly went at this bidding, erected a cross and a chapel,
and finally baptized nearly the whole tribe.
At this time Father Râle wrote to his nephew a letter, in which he
says: “My new church is neat, and its elegantly-ornamented vestments,
chasubles, copes, and holy vessels would be esteemed highly appropriate
in almost any church in Europe. A choir of young Indians, forty in
number, assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and chant the divine
Offices for the consecration of the Holy Sacrament; and you would be
edified by the beautiful order they preserve and the devotion they
manifest. After the Mass I teach the young children, and the remainder
of the morning is devoted to seeing those who come to consult me on
affairs of importance. Thus, you see, I teach some, console others, seek
to re-establish peace in families at variance, and to calm troubled
consciences.”
Another letter still later, in speaking of the attachment of the converts
to their faith, says: “And when they go to the sea-shore in summer to
fish, I accompany them; and when they reach the place where they intend
to pass the night, they erect stakes at intervals in the form of a
chapel, and spread a tent made of ticking. All is complete in fifteen
minutes. I always carry with me a beautiful board of cedar, with the
necessary supports. This serves for an altar, and I ornament the interior
with silken hangings. A huge bear-skin serves as a carpet, and divine
service is held within an hour.”
While away on one of the excursions which Father Râle thus describes, the
village was attacked by the English; and again, in 1722, by a party of
two hundred under Col. Westbrook. New England had passed a law imposing
imprisonment for life on Catholic priests, and a reward was offered for
the head of Father Râle. The party was seen, as they entered the valley
of the Kennebec, by two braves, who hurried on to give the alarm; the
priest having barely time to escape to the woods with the altar vessels
and vestments, leaving behind him all his papers and his precious Abnaki
dictionary, which was enclosed in a strong box of peculiar construction.
It had two rude pictures on the lid, one of the scourging of our Blessed
Lord, and the other of the Crowning of Thorns. This box is now in the
possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society, while the dictionary
itself is at Harvard.
Father Râle saved himself by taking refuge in a hollow tree, where he
remained for thirty-six hours, suffering from hunger and a broken leg.
With wonderful courage Father Râle built up another chapel, and writes
thus, after recounting the efforts of the English to take him prisoner:
“In the words of the apostle, I conclude: I do not fear the threats of
those who hate me without a cause, and I count not my life dear unto
myself, so that I might finish my course and the ministry which I have
received of the Lord Jesus.”
Again, over the council-fires, the Indian chiefs assembled. They decided
to send an embassy to Boston, to demand that their chapel, which had been
destroyed by the English, should be rebuilt.
The governor, anxious to secure the alliance of the tribe, listened
patiently, and told them in reply that it belonged properly to the
governor of Canada to rebuild their church; still, that he would do it,
provided they would agree to receive the clergy he would choose, and
would send back to Quebec the French priest who was then with them. We
cannot forbear repeating here the unequalled satire of the Indian’s reply:
“When you came here,” answered the chief, “we were unknown to the French
governor, but no one of you spoke of prayer or of the Great Spirit. You
thought only of my skins and furs. But one day I met a French black-coat
in the forest. He did not look at the skins with which I was loaded, but
he said words to me of the Great Spirit, of Paradise and of hell, and of
prayer, by which is the only path to heaven.
“I listened with pleasure, and at last begged him to teach and to baptize
me.
“If, when you saw me, you had spoken to me of prayer, I should have had
the misfortune to pray as you do; for I was not then able to know if your
prayers were good. So, I tell you, I will hold fast to the prayers of the
French. I will keep them until the earth burn up and perish.”
At last the final and fatal effort on the life of Father Râle was made,
in 1724.
All was quiet in the little village. The tall corn lay yellow in the
slanting rays of an August sun, when suddenly from the adjacent woods
burst forth a band of English with their Mohawk allies. The devoted
priest, knowing that they were in hot pursuit of him, sallied forth to
meet them, hoping, by the sacrifice of his own life, to save his flock.
Hardly had he reached the mission cross in the centre of the village than
he fell at its foot, pierced by a dozen bullets. Seven Indians, who had
sought to shield him with their bodies, lay dead beside him.
Then followed a scene that beggars description. Women and children were
killed indiscriminately; and it ill became those who shot women as they
swam across the river to bring a charge of cruelty against the French
fathers.
The chapel was robbed and then fired; the bell was not melted, but was
probably afterward buried by the Indians, for it was revealed only a few
years since by the blowing down of a huge oak-tree, and was presented to
Bowdoin College.
The soft, dewy night closed on the scene of devastation, and in the
morning, as one by one the survivors crept back to their ruined homes
with their hearts full of consternation and sorrow, they found the body
of their beloved priest, not only pierced by a hundred balls, but with
the skull crushed by hatchets, arms and legs broken, and mouth and eyes
filled with dirt. They buried him where the day before had stood the
altar of the little chapel, and sent his tattered habits to Quebec.
It was by so precious a death that this apostolical man closed a career
of nearly forty years of painful missionary toil. His fasts and vigils
had greatly enfeebled his constitution, and, when entreated to take
precautions for his safety, he answered: “My measures are taken. God has
committed this flock to my charge, and I will share their fate, being too
happy if permitted to sacrifice myself for them.”
Well did his superior in Canada, M. de Bellemont, reply, when requested
to offer Masses for his soul: “In the words of S. Augustine, I say it
would be wronging a martyr to pray for him.”
There can be no question that Sebastian Râle was one of the most
remarkable men of his day. A devoted Christian and finished scholar,
commanding in manners and elegant in address, of persuasive eloquence and
great administrative ability, he courted death and starvation, for the
sole end of salvation for the Indian.
From the death of Father Râle until 1730 the mission at Norridgewock
was without a priest. In that year, however, the superior at Quebec
sent Father James de Sirenne to that station. The account given by this
father, of the warmth with which he was received, and of the manner in
which the Indians had sought to keep their faith, is very touching. The
women with tears and sobs hastened with their unbaptized babes to the
priest.
In all these years no Protestant clergyman had visited them, for Eliot
was almost the only one who devoted himself to the conversion of the
Indians, though even he, as affirmed by Bancroft, had never approached
the Indian tribe that dwelt within six miles of Boston Harbor until five
years after the cross had been borne, by the religious zeal of the
French, from Lake Superior to the valley of the Mississippi.
But Father Sirenne could not be permitted to remain any length of time
with the Abnakis. Again were they deserted, having a priest with them
only at long intervals.
Then came the peace of 1763, in which France surrendered Canada. This
step struck a most terrible blow at the missions; for although the
English government guaranteed to the Canadians absolute religious
freedom, they yet took quiet steps to rid themselves of the Jesuit
Fathers.
A short breathing space, and another war swept over the land, and with
this perished the last mission in Maine. In 1775 deputies from the
various tribes in Maine and Nova Scotia met the Massachusetts council.
The Indians announced their intention of adhering to the Americans, but
begged, at the same time, for a French priest. The council expressed
their regret at not being able to find one.
“Strange indeed was it,” says Shea, “that the very body which, less than
a century before, had made it felony for a Catholic priest to visit the
Abnakis, now regretted their inability to send these Christian Indians a
missionary of the same faith and nation.”
Years after, when peace was declared, and the few Catholics in Maryland
had chosen the Rev. John Carroll--a member of the proscribed Society of
Jesus--as bishop, the Abnakis of Maine sent a deputation bearing the
crucifix of Father Râle. This they presented to the bishop, with earnest
supplications for a priest.
Bishop Carroll promised that one should be sent, and Father Ciquard
was speedily despatched to Norridgewock, where he remained for ten
years. Then ensued another interval during which the flock was without a
shepherd.
At last a missionary priest at Boston, Father (afterward Cardinal)
Cheverus, turned his attention to the study of the Abnaki dialect, and
then visited the Penobscot tribe.
Desolate, poor, and forsaken as they had been, the Indians still clung
to their faith. The old taught the young, and all gathered on Sundays to
chant the music of the Mass and Vespers, though their altar had no priest
and no sacrifice.
Father Cheverus, after a few months, was succeeded by Father Romagné,
who for twenty years consecrated every moment and every thought to the
evangelization of the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes. In July, 1827,
Bishop Fenwick visited this portion of his diocese, and in 1831 sent them
a resident missionary. A beautiful church stood at last in the place of
Romagné’s hut, and two years later Bishop Fenwick, once a father in the
Society of Jesus, erected a monument to Father Râle on the spot where he
was slain a hundred and nine years before. From far and near gathered
the crowd, Protestant as well as Catholic, to witness the ceremony. The
monument stands in a green, secluded spot, a simple shaft of granite
surmounted by a cross, and an inscription in Latin tells the traveller
that there died a faithful priest and servant of the Lord. Bishop Fenwick
became extremely anxious to induce some French priest to go to that
ancient mission, and a year later the Society of Picpus, in Switzerland,
sent out Fathers Demilier and Petithomme to restore the Franciscan
missions in Maine. They conquered the difficulties of the Abnaki dialect
with the aid of a prayer-book which the bishop had caused to be printed,
and in this small and insignificant mission Father Demilier toiled until
his death, in 1843.
The successor of Bishop Fenwick resolved to restore the Abnaki mission
to the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, by whom it had been originally
founded. Therefore, since 1848, the Penobscots and Passamaquoddys have
been under the care of the Jesuits, who in that year sent out from
Switzerland Father John Bapst to Old Town, on the Penobscot--a short
distance from Bangor--where he ministered faithfully to the Abnakis until
he nearly lost his life in a disgraceful Know-Nothing riot in 1854.
As we find ourselves thus at the conclusion of our narration, incidents
crowd upon our memory of the wondrous sacrifices made by the Catholic
clergy in the old missions of Maine; but we are admonished that our space
is limited.
Little attention, however, has been paid to the fact that to these
Catholic priests alone under God is due the evangelization of the many
Indian tribes which formerly haunted our grand old forests. Of these
tribes, only a few of the Penobscots are left, and these cling still to
the cross as the blessed symbol of the faith first brought to them, “as
a voice crying in the wilderness,” by Fathers Biard and Du Thet at St.
Sauveur in 1613.
PRUSSIA AND THE CHURCH.
The first attempts to introduce the Christian religion into Prussia
were unsuccessful. S. Adalbert, in 997, and S. Bruno, in 1009, suffered
martyrdom whilst preaching the Gospel there, and the efforts of Poland
to force the conquered Prussians to receive the faith only increased
the bitterness of their anti-Christian prejudices. Early in the XIIth
century Bishop Otto, of Bamberg, made many conversions in Pomerania; and
finally, in the beginning of the XIIIth, the Cistercian monk Christian,
with the approval and encouragement of Pope Innocent III., set to work
to convert the Prussians, and met with such success that in 1215 he was
made bishop of the country. The greater part of the people, however,
still remained heathens, and the progress of Christianity aroused in
them such indignation that they determined to oppose its farther advance
with the sword. To protect his flock Bishop Christian called to his aid
the knights of the Teutonic Order; in furtherance of his designs, the
Emperor Frederic II. turned the whole country over to them, and Pope
Gregory IX. took measures to increase their number, so that they might be
able to hold possession of this field, now first opened to the Gospel.
Pope Innocent IV. also manifested special interest in the welfare of the
church in Prussia; he urged priests and monks to devote themselves to
this mission, supported and encouraged the bishops in their trials and
difficulties, and exhorted the convents throughout Germany to contribute
books for the education of the people. But circumstances were not wanting
which made the position of the church in Prussia very unsatisfactory. The
people had for the most part been brought under the church’s influence by
the power of arms, and consequently to a great extent remained strangers
to her true spirit. The Teutonic Order, moreover, gave ecclesiastical
positions only to German priests, so as to hold out inducements to the
people to learn German; though, as a consequence, the priests were unable
to communicate with their flocks, except by the aid of interpreters.
The grand master, too, had almost unlimited control over the election
of bishops, which was the cause of many evils, especially as the Order
gradually grew lax in the observance of the rule, and lost much of
its Christian character. Unworthy men were thrust into ecclesiastical
offices, the standard of morality among the clergy was lowered, and the
people lost respect for the priesthood. It is not surprising, in view of
all this, that the religious sectaries of the XIIIth and XIVth centuries
should have found favor in Prussia, and made converts among her still
half-pagan populations.
In 1466 the Teutonic Order became a dependency of the crown of Poland.
There was no hope of its freeing itself from this humiliating subjection
without foreign aid; and with a view to obtain this, the knights resolved
to choose their grand master from one or other of the most powerful
German families. First, in 1498, they elected Frederic, Duke of Saxony;
and upon his death, in 1510, Albrecht, Margrave of Brandenburg, was
chosen to succeed him.
Albrecht refused the oath of supremacy to Sigismund, King of Poland, who
thereupon, in 1519, declared war upon him.
To meet the expenses of the war, Albrecht had the sacred vessels of
the church melted down and minted; but he was unable to stand against
the arms of Poland, and therefore sought the mediation of the Emperor
of Germany, through whose good offices he was able to conclude, in
1521, a four years’ truce. He now went into Germany, where Luther was
already preaching the Protestant rebellion, and asked aid from the
Imperial Parliament, which was holding its sessions at Nuremberg; and
as this was denied him, he turned with favor to the teachers of the new
doctrines. The Teutonic Order had become thoroughly corrupt, and Leo X.
urged Albrecht to begin a reformation _in capite et membris_; but the
grand master sought the advice of Luther, from whom he received the not
unwelcome counsel to throw away the “stupid, unnatural rule of his Order,
take a wife, and turn Prussia into a temporal hereditary principality.”
Albrecht accordingly asked for preachers of the new doctrines, and in
1526 announced his abandonment of the Order and the Catholic Church by
his marriage with the daughter of the King of Denmark. Acting upon the
Protestant principle, _cujus regio illius religio_--the ruler of the land
makes its religion--he forced the Prussians to quit the church from which
they had received whatever culture and civilization they had.
At his death, in 1568, Lutheranism had gained complete possession of the
country.
A few Catholics, however, remained, for whom, early in the XVIIth
century, King Sigismund of Poland succeeded in obtaining liberty of
conscience, which, however, was denied to those of Brandenburg Frederic
William, the second king of Prussia, and the first to form the design
of placing her among the great powers of Europe by the aid of a strong
military organization, in giving directions in 1718 for the education of
his son, afterwards Frederic the Great, insisted that the boy should be
inspired with a horror of the Catholic Church, “the groundlessness and
absurdity of whose teachings should be placed before his eyes and well
impressed upon his mind.”
Frederic William was a rigid Calvinist; and if he tolerated a few
Catholics in his dominions, it was only that he might vent his ill-humor
or exercise his proselytizing zeal upon them. He indeed granted Father
Raymundus Bruns permission to say Mass in the garrisons at Berlin and
Potsdam, but only after he had been assured that it would tend to prevent
desertions among his Catholic soldiers, and that, as Raymundus was a
monk, bound by a vow of poverty, he would ask no pay from his majesty.
In 1746 permission was granted the Catholics to hold public worship in
Berlin, and the S. Hedwig’s church was built; in Pomerania, however, this
privilege was denied them, except in the Polish districts.
During the XVIIIth century congregations were formed at Stettin and
Stralsund. In the principality of Halberstadt the Catholics were allowed
to retain possession of a church and several monasteries, in which
public worship was permitted; and in what had been the archbishopric of
Magdeburg there were left to them one Benedictine monastery and four
convents of Cistercian Nuns. These latter, however, were placed under the
supervision of Protestant ministers.
Frederic the Great early in life fell under the influence of Voltaire
and his disciples, from whom he learned to despise all religion, and
especially the rigid Calvinism of his father. He became a religious
sceptic, and, satisfied with his contempt for all forms of faith, did
not take the trouble to persecute any. He asked of his subjects, whether
Protestant or Catholic, nothing but money and recruits; for the rest,
he allowed every one in his dominions “to save his soul after his own
fashion.” He provided chaplains for his Catholic soldiers, and forbade
the Calvinist and Lutheran ministers to interfere with their religious
freedom, for reasons similar to those which had induced his father to
permit Raymundus Bruns to say Mass in the garrison at Berlin. He had
certainly no thought of showing any favor to the church, except so far as
it might promote his own ambitious projects. His great need of soldiers
made him throw every obstacle in the way of those who wished to enter
the priesthood, and his fear of foreign influence caused him to forbid
priests to leave the country. His mistrust of priests was so great that
he gave instructions to Count Hoym, his Minister of State, to place them
under a system of espionage. Catholics were carefully excluded from all
influential and lucrative positions. They were taxed more heavily than
Protestants, and professors in the universities were required to take an
oath to uphold the Reformation.
Notwithstanding, it was in the reign of Frederic the Great that the
Catholic Church in Prussia may be said to have entered upon a new life.
For more than two hundred years it had had no recognized status there;
but through the conquest of Silesia and the division of Poland, a large
Catholic population was incorporated into the kingdom of Prussia, and
thus a new element, which was formally recognized in the constitution
promulgated by Frederic’s immediate successor, was introduced into the
Prussian state. Together with the toleration of all who believed in God
and were loyal to the king, the law of the land placed the Catholic and
Protestant churches on an equal footing. To understand how far this was
favorable to the church we must go back and consider the relations of
Prussia to Protestantism.
What is known as the Territorial System, by which the faith of the
people is delivered into the hands of the temporal ruler, has existed in
Prussia from the time Albrecht of Brandenburg went over to the Reformers.
Protestantism and absolutism triumphed simultaneously throughout Europe,
and this must undoubtedly be in a great measure attributed to the fact
that the Protestants, whether willingly or not, yielded up their faith
into the keeping of kings and princes, and thus practically abandoned
the distinction of the spiritual and temporal powers which lies at the
foundation of Christian civilization, and is also the strongest bulwark
against the encroachments of governments upon the rights of citizens.
Duke Albrecht had hardly become a Protestant when he felt that it was
his duty (“_coacti sumus_” are his words) to take upon himself the
episcopal office. This was in 1530; in 1550 he treated the urgent request
of the Assembly to have the bishopric of Samland restored as an attack
upon his princely prerogative.
His successor diverted to other uses the fund destined for the
maintenance of the bishops, and instituted two consistories, to which he
entrusted the ecclesiastical affairs of the duchy.
During the XVIIth century Calvinism gained a firm foothold in Prussia. It
became the religion of the ruling family, and Frederic William, called
the Great Elector, to whose policy his successors have agreed to ascribe
their greatness, sought in every way to promote its interests, though he
strenuously exercised his _jus episcopale_, his spiritual supremacy over
both the Lutherans and the Calvinists.
His son, Frederic, who first took the title of King of Prussia (1700),
continued the policy of his father with regard to ecclesiastical affairs.
“To us alone,” he declared to the Landstand, “belongs the _jus supremum
episcopale_, the highest and sovereign right in ecclesiastical matters.”
The Lutherans wished to retain the exorcism as a part of the ceremony
of baptism; but Frederic published an edict by which he forbade the
appointment of any minister who would refuse to confer the sacrament
without making use of this ceremony. In the same way he meddled with the
Lutheran practice of auricular confession; and by an order issued in 1703
prohibited the publication of theological writings which had not received
his imprimatur.
His successor, Frederic William, the father of Frederic the Great,
looked upon himself as the absolute and irresponsible master of the
subjects whom God had given him. “I am king and master,” he was wont
to say, “and can do what I please.” He was a rigid Calvinist, and made
his absolutism felt more especially in religious matters. It seems that
preachers then, as since, were sometimes in the habit of preaching long
sermons; so King Frederic William put a fine of two thalers upon any one
who should preach longer than one hour. He required his preachers to
insist in _all their sermons_ upon the duty of obedience and loyalty to
the king, and the government officials were charged to report any failure
to make special mention of this duty. Both Lutherans and Calvinists were
forbidden to touch in their sermons upon any points controverted between
the two confessions. No detail of religious worship was insignificant
enough to escape his meddlesome tyranny. The length of the service, the
altar, the vestments of the minister, the sign of the cross, the giving
or singing the blessing, all fell under his “high episcopal supervision.”
This unlovely old king was followed by Frederic the Great, who, though
an infidel and a scoffer, held as firmly as his father to his sovereign
episcopal prerogatives, and who, if less meddlesome, was not less
arbitrary. And now we have got back to the constitution which, after
Silesia and a part of Poland had been united to the crown of Prussia,
was partially drawn up under Frederic the Great, and completed and
promulgated during the reign of his successor; and which, as we have
already said, placed the three principal confessions of the Christian
faith in the Prussian states--viz., the Lutheran, the Reformed, and
the Catholic--on a footing of equality before the law. Now, it must be
noticed, this constitution left intact the absolute authority of the king
over the Reformed and Lutheran churches, and therefore what might seem
to be a great gain for the Catholic Church was really none at all, since
it was simply placed under the supreme jurisdiction of the king. There
was no express recognition of the organic union of the church in Prussia
with the pope, nor of the right of the bishops to govern their dioceses
according to the ecclesiastical canons, but rather the tacit assumption
that the king was head of the Catholic as of the Protestant churches in
Prussia. The constitution was drawn up by Suarez, a bitter enemy of the
church, and in many of its details was characterized by an anti-Catholic
spirit. It annulled, for instance, the contract made by parents of
different faith concerning the religious education of their children,
and manifested in many other ways that petty and tyrannical spirit which
has led Prussia to interfere habitually with the internal discipline and
working of the church.
As the Catholic population of Prussia increased through the annexation
of different German states, this constitution, which gave the king
supreme control of spiritual matters, was extended to the newly-acquired
territories. Thus all through the XVIIIth century the church in Prussia,
though not openly persecuted, was fettered. No progress was made, abuses
could not be reformed, the appointment of bishops was not free, the
training of the priesthood was very imperfect; and it is not surprising
that this slavery should have been productive of many and serious evils.
The French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon, which caused social and
political upheavals throughout Europe, toppled down thrones, overthrew
empires, and broke up and reformed the boundaries of nations, mark a new
epoch in the history of Prussia, and indeed of all Germany, whose people
had been taught by these disastrous wars that they had common interests
which could not be protected without national unity, the want of which
had never before been made so painfully manifest.
After the downfall of Napoleon, the ambassadors of the Allied Powers met
in Vienna to settle the affairs of all Europe. Nations, provinces, and
cities were given away in the most reckless manner, without any thought
of the interests or wishes of the people, to the kings and rulers who
could command the greatest influence in the congress or whose displeasure
was most feared. Germany demanded the restoration of Alsace and Lorraine,
but was thwarted in her designs by Great Britain and Russia, who feared
the restoration of her ancient power.
Prussia received from the congress, as some compensation for its
sufferings and sacrifices during the Napoleonic wars, the duchies
of Jülich and Berg, the former possessions of the episcopal sees of
Cologne and Treves, and several other territories, which were formed
into the Rhine province. On the other hand, it lost a portion of the
Sclavonic population which it had held on the east; so that, though it
gained nothing in territory, it became more strictly a German state,
and was consequently better fitted gradually to take the lead in the
irrepressible movement toward the unification of Germany.
In the Congress of Vienna it was stipulated that Catholics and
Protestants should have equal rights before the law. The constitutional
law of Prussia was extended to the newly-acquired provinces and “all
ecclesiastical matters, whether of Roman Catholics or of Protestants,
together with the supervision and administration of all charitable funds,
the confirming of all persons appointed to spiritual offices, and the
supervision over the administration of ecclesiastics as far as it may
have any relation to civil affairs, were reserved to the government.”
In 1817, upon the occasion of the reorganization of the government,
we perceive to what practical purposes these principles were to be
applied. The church was debased to a function of the state, her interests
were placed in the hands of the ministry for spiritual affairs, and
the education of even clerical students was put under the control of
government.
It was in this same year, 1817, that the tercentennial anniversary of
the birth of Protestantism was celebrated. For two centuries Protestant
faith in Germany had been dying out. Eager and bitter controversies,
the religious wars and the plunder of church property during the XVIth
and early part of the XVIIth centuries, had given it an unnatural and
artificial vigor. It was a mighty and radical revolution, social,
political, and religious, and therefore gave birth to fanaticism and
intense partisan zeal, and was in turn helped on by them.
There is a natural strength in a new faith, and when it is tried by
war and persecution it seems to rise to a divine power. Protestantism
burst upon Europe with irresistible force. Fifty years had not passed
since Luther had burned the bull of Pope Leo, and the Catholic Church,
beaten almost everywhere in the North of Europe, seemed hardly able to
hold her own on the shores of the Mediterranean; fifty years later, and
Protestantism was saved in Germany itself only by the arms of Catholic
France. The peace of Westphalia, in 1648, put an end to the religious
wars of Germany, and from that date the decay of the Protestant faith was
rapid. Many causes helped on the work of ruin; the inherent weakness of
the Protestant system from its purely negative character, the growing and
bitter dissensions among Protestants, the hopeless slavery to which the
sects had been reduced by the civil power, all tended to undermine faith.
In the Palatinate, within a period of sixty years, the rulers had forced
the people to change their religion four times. In Prussia, whose king,
as we have seen, was supreme head of the church, the ruling house till
1539 was Catholic; then, till 1613, Lutheran; from that date to 1740,
Calvinistic; from 1740 to 1786, infidel, the avowed ally of Voltaire and
D’Alembert; then, till 1817, Calvinistic; and finally again evangelical.
During the long reign of Frederic the Great unbelief made steady
progress. Men no longer attacked this or that article of faith, but
Christianity itself. The quickest way, it was openly said by many, to
get rid of superstition and priest-craft, would be to abolish preaching
altogether, and thus remove the ghost of religion from the eyes of the
people. It seems strange that such license of thought and expression
should have been tolerated, and even encouraged, in a country where
religion itself has never been free; but it is a peculiarity of the
Prussian system of government that while it hampers and fetters the
church and all religious organizations, it leaves the widest liberty
of conscience to the individual. Its policy appears to be to foster
indifference and infidelity, in order to use them against what it
considers religious fanaticism. Another circumstance which favored
infidelity may be found in the political thraldom in which Prussia
held her people. As men were forbidden to speak or write on subjects
relating to the government or the public welfare, they took refuge in
theological and philosophical discussions, which in Protestant lands
have never failed to lead to unbelief. This same state of things tended
to promote the introduction and increase of secret societies, which,
in the latter half of the XVIIIth century, sprang up in great numbers
throughout Germany, bearing a hundred different names, but always having
anti-Christian tendencies.
To stop the spread of infidelity, Frederic William II., the successor
of Frederic the Great, issued, in 1788, an “edict, embracing the
constitution of religion in the Prussian states.” The king declared
that he could no longer suffer in his dominions that men should openly
seek to undermine religion, to make the Bible ridiculous in the eyes
of the people, and to raise in public the banner of unbelief, deism,
and naturalism. He would in future permit no farther change in the
creed, whether of the Lutheran or the Reformed Church. This was the
more necessary as he had himself noticed with sorrow, years before he
ascended the throne, that the Protestant ministers allowed themselves
boundless license with regard to the articles of faith, and indeed
altogether rejected several essential parts and fundamental verities of
the Protestant Church and the Christian religion. They blushed not to
revive the long-since-refuted errors of the Socinians, the deists, and
the naturalists, and to scatter them among the people under the false
name of enlightenment (_Aufklärung_), whilst they treated God’s Word with
disdain, and strove to throw suspicion upon the mysteries of revelation.
Since this was intolerable, he, therefore, as ruler of the land and
only law-giver in his states, commanded and ordered that in future no
clergyman, preacher, or school-teacher of the Protestant religion should
presume, under pain of perpetual loss of office and of even severer
punishment, to disseminate the errors already named; for, as it was his
duty to preserve intact the law of the land, so was it incumbent upon him
to see that religion should be kept free from taint; and he could not,
consequently, allow its ministers to substitute their whims and fancies
for the truths of Christianity. They must teach what had been agreed upon
in the symbols of faith of the denomination to which they belonged; to
this they were bound by their office and the contract under which they
had received their positions. Nevertheless, out of his great love for
freedom of conscience, the king was willing that those who were known to
disbelieve in the articles of faith might retain their offices, provided
they consented to teach their flocks what they were themselves unable to
believe.
In this royal edict we have at once the fullest confession of the
general unbelief that was destroying Protestantism in Prussia, and of
the hopelessness of any attempt to arrest its progress. What could be
more pitiable than the condition of a church powerless to control its
ministers, and publicly recognizing their right to be hypocrites? How
could men who had no faith teach others to believe? Moreover, what could
be more absurd, from a Protestant point of view, than to seek to force
the acceptance of symbols of faith when the whole Reformation rested upon
the assumed right of the individual to decide for himself what should or
should not be believed? Or was it to be supposed that men could invest
the conflicting creeds of the sects with a sacredness which they had
denied to that of the universal church? It is not surprising, therefore,
that the only effect of the edict should have been to increase the energy
and activity of the infidels and free-thinkers.
Frederic William III., who ascended the throne in 1797, recognizing the
futility of his father’s attempt to keep alive faith in Protestantism,
stopped the enforcement of the edict, with the express declaration that
its effect had been to lessen religion and increase hypocrisy. Abandoning
all hope of controlling the faith of the preachers, he turned his
attention to their morals. A decree of the Oberconsistorium of Berlin, in
1798, ordered that the conduct of the ministers should be closely watched
and every means employed to stop the daily-increasing immorality of the
servants of the church, which was having the most injurious effects upon
their congregations. Parents had almost ceased having their children
baptized, or had them christened in the “name of Frederic the Great,” or
in the “name of the good and the fair,” sometimes with rose-water.
But the calamities which befell Germany during the wars of the French
Revolution and the empire seemed to have turned the thoughts of many
to religion. The frightful humiliations of the fatherland were looked
upon as a visitation from heaven upon the people for their sins
and unbelief; and therefore, when the tercentennial anniversary of
Protestantism came around (in 1817), they were prepared to enter upon
its celebration with earnest enthusiasm. The celebration took the form
of an anti-Catholic demonstration. For many years controversy between
Protestants and Catholics had ceased; but now a wholly unprovoked but
bitter and grossly insulting attack was made upon the church from all
the Protestant pulpits of Germany and in numberless writings. The result
of this wanton aggression was a reawakening of Catholic faith and life;
whilst the attempt to take advantage of the Protestant enthusiasm to
bring about a union between the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prussia
ended in causing fresh dissensions and divisions. The sect of the Old
Lutherans was formed, which, in spite of persecution, finally succeeded
in obtaining toleration, though not till many of its adherents had been
driven across the ocean into exile.
As the Congress of Vienna had decided that Catholics and Protestants
should be placed upon a footing of equality, and as Prussia had received
a large portion of the _secularized_ lands of the church, with the
stipulation that she should provide for the maintenance of Catholic
worship, the government, in 1816, sent Niebuhr, the historian, to Rome,
to treat with the Pope concerning the reorganization of the Catholic
religion in the Prussian states. Finally, in 1821, an agreement was
signed, which received the sanction of the king, and was published as a
fundamental law of the state.
In this Concordat with the Holy See there is at least a tacit recognition
of the true nature of the church, of her organic unity--a beginning of
respect for her freedom, and a seeming promise of a better future. In
point of fact, however, in spite of Niebuhr’s assurance to the Holy
Father that he might rely upon the honest intentions of the government,
Prussia began almost at once to meddle with the rights of Catholics.
A silent and slow persecution was inaugurated, by which it was hoped
their patience would be exhausted and their strength wasted. And now we
shall examine more closely the artful and heartless policy by which,
with but slight variations, for more than two centuries Prussia has
sought to undermine the Catholic religion. In 1827 the Protestants of
all communions in Prussia amounted to 6,370,380, and the Catholics
to 4,023,513. These populations are, to only a very limited extent,
intermingled; certain provinces being almost entirely Catholic, and
others nearly wholly Protestant. By law the same rights are granted to
both Catholics and Protestants; and both, therefore, should receive like
treatment at the hands of the government.
This is the theory; what are the facts? We will take the religious policy
of Prussia from the reorganization of the church after the Congress of
Vienna down to the revolution of 1848, and we will begin with the subject
of education. For the six millions of Protestants there were four
exclusively Protestant universities, at Berlin, Halle, Königsberg, and
Greifswalde; for the four millions of Catholics there were but two _half
universities_, at Bonn and Breslau, in each of which there was a double
faculty, the one Protestant, the other Catholic; though the professors
in all the faculties, except that of theology, were for the most part
Protestants. Thus, out of six universities, to the Catholics was left
only a little corner in two, though they were forced to bear nearly
one-half of the public burdens by which all six were supported. But this
is not the worst. The bishops had no voice in the nomination of the
professors, not even those of theology. They were simply asked whether
they had any objections to make, _on proof_. The candidate might be a
stranger, he might be wholly unfitted to teach theology, he might be free
from open immorality or heresy; and therefore, because the bishops could
_prove_ nothing against him, he was appointed to instruct the aspirants
to the priesthood.
At Breslau a foreign professor was appointed, who began to teach the
most scandalous and heretical doctrines. Complaints were useless. During
many years his pupils drank in the poison, and at length, after he had
done his work of destruction, he was, as in mockery, removed. Nor is
this an isolated instance of the ruin to Catholic faith wrought by this
system. The bishops had hardly any influence over the education of their
clergy, who, young and ignorant of the world, were thrown almost without
restraint into the pagan corruptions of a German university, in order to
acquire a knowledge of theology. At Cologne a Catholic college was made
over to the Protestants, at Erfurt and Düsseldorf Catholic _gymnasia_
were turned into mixed establishments with all the professors, save one,
Protestants.
Elementary education was under the control of provincial boards
consisting of a Protestant president and three councillors, _one_ of whom
might be a Catholic in Catholic districts. In the Catholic provinces
of the Rhine and Westphalia, the place of Catholic councillor was left
vacant for several years till the schools were all reorganized. Indeed,
the real superintendent of Catholic elementary education was generally a
Protestant minister.
There was a government _Censur_ for books of religious instruction, the
headquarters of which were in Berlin, but its agents were scattered
throughout all the provinces. All who were employed in this department,
to which even the pastorals of the bishops had to be submitted before
being read to their flocks, were Protestants. The widest liberty was
given to Protestants to attack the church; but when the Catholics
sought to defend themselves, their writings were suppressed. Professor
Freudenfeld was obliged to quit Bonn because he had spoken of Luther
without becoming respect.
Permission to start religious journals was denied to Catholics, but
granted to Protestants; and in the pulpit the priests were put under
strict restraint, while the preachers were given full liberty of speech.
Whenever a community of Protestants was found in a Catholic district, a
church, a clergyman, and a school were immediately provided for them;
indeed, richer provision for the Protestant worship was made in the
Catholic provinces than elsewhere; but when a congregation of Catholics
grew up amongst Protestants, the government almost invariably rejected
their application for permission to have a place of worship. At various
times and places churches and schools were taken from the Catholics
and turned over to the Protestants; and though Prussia had received an
enormous amount of the confiscated property of the church, she did not
provide for the support of the priests as for that of the ministers.
At court there was not a single Catholic who held office; the heads of
all the departments of government were Protestants; the Post-Office
department, down to the local postmasters, was exclusively Protestant;
all ambassadors and other representatives of the government, though sent
to Catholic courts, were Protestants.
In Prussia the state is divided into provinces, and at the head of each
province is a high-president (Ober-Präsident). This official, to whom
the religious interests of the Catholics were committed, was always a
Protestant. The provinces are divided into districts, and at the head of
each district was a Protestant president, and almost all the inferior
officers, even in Catholic provinces, were Protestants.
Again, in the courts of justice and in the army all the principal
positions were given to Protestants. In the two _corps d’armées_ of
Prussia and Silesia, one-half was Catholic; in the army division of
Posen, two-thirds; in that of Westphalia and Cleves, three-fifths; and,
finally, in that of the Rhine, seven-eighths; yet there was not one
Catholic field-officer, not a general or major. In 1832 a royal order was
issued to provide for the religious wants of the army, and every care
was taken for the spiritual needs of the Protestant soldiers; but not
even one Catholic chaplain was appointed. All persons in active service,
from superior officers down to private soldiers, were declared to be
members of the military parish, and were placed under the authority of
the Protestant chaplains. If a Catholic soldier wished to get married
or to have his child baptized by a priest, he had first to obtain the
permission of his Protestant curate. What was still more intolerable, the
law regulating military worship was so contrived as to force the Catholic
soldiers to be present at Protestant service.
Let us now turn to the relations of the church in Prussia with the Holy
See. All direct communications between the Catholics and the Pope were
expressly forbidden. Whenever the bishops wished to consult the Holy
Father concerning the administration of their dioceses, their inquiries
had to pass through the hands of the Protestant ministry, to be forwarded
or not at its discretion, and the answer of the Pope had to pass through
the same channel. It was not safe to write; for the government had no
respect for the mails, and letters were habitually opened by order of
Von Nagler, the postmaster-general, who boasted that he had never had
any idiotic scruples about such matters; that Prince Constantine was his
model, who had once entertained him with narrating how he had managed
to get the choicest selection of intercepted letters in existence; he
had had them bound in morocco, and they formed thirty-three volumes of
the most interesting reading in his private library. Thus the church
was ruled by a system of espionage and bureaucracy which hesitated not
to violate all the sanctities of life to accomplish its ends. The
bishops were reduced to a state of abject dependence; not being allowed
to publish any new regulation or to make any appointment without the
permission and approval of the Protestant high-president, from whom they
constantly received the most annoying and vexatious despatches.
The election of bishops was reduced to a mere form. When a see became
vacant, the royal commissary visited the chapter and announced the person
whom the king had selected to fill the office, declaring at the same time
that no other would receive his approval.
The minutest details of Catholic worship were placed under the
supervision and control of Protestant laymen, who had to decide how much
wine and how many hosts might be used during the year in the different
churches.
We come now to a matter, vexed and often discussed, in which the trials
of the church in Prussia, prior to the recent persecutions, finally
culminated; we allude to the subject of marriages between Catholics and
Protestants.
When, in 1803, Prussia got possession of the greater part of her Catholic
provinces, the following order was at once issued: “His majesty enacts
that children born in wedlock shall all be educated in the religion of
the father, and that, in opposition to this law, neither party shall bind
the other.” Apart from the odious meddling of the state with the rights
of individuals and the agreements of parties so closely and sacredly
related as man and wife, there was in this enactment a special injustice
to Catholics, from the fact that nearly all the mixed marriages in
Prussia were contracted by Protestant government officials and Catholic
women of the provinces to which these agents had been sent. As these men
held lucrative offices, they found no difficulty in making matrimonial
alliances; and as the children had to be brought up in the religion of
the father, the government was by this means gradually establishing
Protestant congregations throughout its Catholic provinces. In 1825 this
law was extended to the Rhenish province, and in 1831 a document was
brought to light which explained the object of the extension--viz., that
it might prove an effectual measure against the proselyting system of
Catholics.
The condition of the church was indeed deplorable. With the name of
being free, she was, in truth, enslaved; and while the state professed
to respect her rights, it was using all the power of the most thoroughly
organized and most heartless system of bureaucracy and espionage to
weaken and fetter her action, and even to destroy her life. This was the
state of affairs when, in the end of 1835, Von Droste Vischering, one of
the greatest and noblest men of this century, worthy to be named with
Athanasius and with Ambrose, was made archbishop of Cologne.
The Catholic people of Prussia had long since lost all faith in the
good intentions of the government, of whose acts and aims they had full
knowledge; and it was in order to restore confidence that a man so
trusted and loved by them as Von Droste Vischering was promoted to the
see of Cologne. The doctrines of Hermes, professor of theology in the
University of Bonn, had just been condemned at Rome, but the government
ignored the papal brief, and continued to give its support to the
Hermesians; the archbishop, nevertheless, condemned their writings, and
especially their organ, the _Bonner Theologische Zeitschrift_, forbade
his students to attend their lectures at the university, and finally
withdrew his approbation altogether from the Hermesian professors,
refusing to ordain students unless they formally renounced the proscribed
doctrines.
By a ministerial order issued in 1825, priests were forbidden, under
pain of deposition from office, to exact in mixed marriages any
promise concerning the education of the offspring. A like penalty
was threatened for refusing to marry parties who were unwilling to
make such promises, or for withholding absolution from those who were
bringing up their children in the Protestant religion. To avert as far
as possible any conflict between the church and the government, Pius
VIII., in 1830, addressed a brief to the bishops of Cologne, Treves,
Münster, and Paderborn, in which he made every allowable concession
to the authority of the state in the matter of mixed marriages. The
court of Berlin withheld the papal brief, and, taking advantage of the
yielding disposition of Archbishop Spiegel of Cologne, entered, without
the knowledge of the Holy See, into a secret agreement with him, in
which still farther concessions were made, and in violation of Catholic
principle. Von Droste Vischering took as his guide the papal brief,
and paid no attention to such provisions of the secret agreement as
conflicted with the instructions of the Holy Father.
The government took alarm, and offered to let fall the Hermesians, if
the archbishop would yield in the affair of mixed marriages; and as
this expedient failed, measures of violence were threatened, which were
soon carried into effect; for on the evening of the 20th of November,
1837, the archbishop was secretly arrested and carried off to the
fortress of Minden, where he was placed in close confinement, all
communication with him being cut off. The next morning the government
issued a “Publicandum,” in which it entered its accusations against the
archbishop, in order to justify its arbitrary act and to appease the
anger of the people. Notwithstanding, a cry of indignation and grief
was heard in all the Catholic provinces of Prussia, which was re-echoed
throughout Germany and extended to all Europe. Lukewarm Catholics grew
fervent, and the very Hermesians gathered with their sympathies to uphold
the cause of the archbishop.
The Archbishop of Posen and the Bishops of Paderborn and Münster
announced their withdrawal from the secret convention, which the Bishop
of Treves had already done upon his death-bed; and henceforward the
priests throughout the kingdom held firm to the ecclesiastical law on
mixed marriages, so that in 1838 Frederic William III. was forced to make
a declaration recognizing the rights for which they contended. But the
Archbishop of Cologne was still a prisoner in the fortress of Minden.
Early, however, in 1839, health began to fail; and as the government
feared lest his death in prison might produce unfavorable comment, he
received permission to withdraw to Münster. The next year the king died,
and his successor, Frederic William IV., showed himself ready to settle
the dispute amicably, and in other ways to do justice to the Catholics.
A great victory had been gained--the secret convention was destroyed--a
certain liberty of communication with the Pope was granted to the
bishops. The election of bishops was made comparatively free, the control
of the schools of theology was restored to them, the Hermesians either
submitted or were removed, and the Catholics of Germany awoke from a
deathlike sleep to new and vigorous life.
An evidence of the awakening of faith was given in the fall of 1844, when
a million and a half of German Catholics went in pilgrimage, with song
and prayer, to Treves.
Nevertheless, many grievances remained unredressed. The _Censur_ was
still used against the church; and when the Catholics asked permission
to publish journals in which they could defend themselves and their
religious interests, they were told that such publications were not
needed; but when Ronge, the suspended priest, sought to found his sect of
“German Catholics,” he received every encouragement from the government,
and the earnest support of the officials and nearly the entire press of
Prussia; though, at this very time, every effort was being made to crush
the “Old Lutherans.”
The government continued to find pretexts for meddling with the affairs
of the bishops, and the newspapers attacked the church in the most
insulting manner, going so far as to demand that the religious exercises
for priests should be placed under police supervision. We have now
reached a memorable epoch in the history of the Catholic Church in
Prussia--the revolution of 1848, which convulsed Germany to its centre,
spread dismay among all classes, and filled its cities with riot and
bloodshed. When order was re-established, the liberties of the church
were recognized more fully than they had been for three centuries.
GARCIA MORENO.
FROM THE CIVILTA CATTOLICA.
I.
The atrocious assassination of Garcia Moreno, the President of the
republic of Ecuador, has filled the minds of all good people with the
deepest grief and horror. The liberals are the only ones who have
mentioned it in their journals with indifference. One of them headed
his announcement of it, “A victim of the Sacred Heart”--alluding,
with blasphemous irony, to the act of consecration of his people to
the Adorable Heart of our Lord which this truly pious ruler had made.
But with the exception of these reprobates--who, hating God, cannot
love mankind--no one who has any admiration of moral greatness can
help deploring the death of this extraordinary man--a death the more
deplorable on account of its coming, not from a natural cause, but from a
detestable conspiracy concocted by the enemies of all that is good, who
abhorred equally the wisdom of his government and the soundness of his
faith. The London _Times_ has a despatch from Paris of October 5 with the
following communication: “It appears, from authentic information which we
have received, that Garcia Moreno, lately President of the republic of
Ecuador, has been assassinated by a secret society which extends through
all South America, as well as Europe. The assassin was selected by lot,
and obtained admission to the palace at Quito. One of his accomplices,
an official, who was arrested after the murder, was assured by the
president of the court-martial, before his trial, that he would be
pardoned if he turned state’s evidence. ‘Be pardoned?’ said he. ‘That
would be of no use to me; if you pardon me, my comrades will not. I would
rather be shot than stabbed.’” This decision of the society to kill him
was known to Moreno, and he informed the Pope of it in a letter, which we
will shortly give.
This illustrious man had governed the republic of Ecuador for about
fifteen years--first as dictator, and afterwards, for two consecutive
terms, as president; and to this office he had just been re-elected for
a third term by an unanimous vote. He had taken charge of the state
when it was in an exceedingly miserable condition, and by his lofty
genius, practical tact, and perseverance, but above all by his piety and
confidence in God, had completely renovated and restored not only the
morals of the people, but also the whole political administration, and
made the country a perfect model of a Christian nation. He was intending
to complete the work which he had begun, and was able to rely confidently
on the co-operation of his people, whose reverence and love for him were
unbounded. But all this was intolerable to the liberals of our day; they
could not bear that in a corner of the New World the problem should be
solved, which they are trying to make so perplexing, of harmony between
the state and the church; of the combination of temporal prosperity and
Catholic piety; of obedience to the civil law and perfect submission to
ecclesiastical authority. This was an insufferable scandal for modern
liberalism,[248] especially because such a good example might do much to
frustrate the plans of this perverse sect in other countries.
The Masons, therefore, resolved to murder this man, whom they had found
to be too brave and determined to be checked in any other way; for
all the attempts they had made to intimidate him or to diminish his
popularity had been entirely without effect. Moreno anticipated the blow,
but, far from fearing it, was only the more persuaded to persevere in
his undertaking, regarding it as the greatest happiness to be able to
give his life for so holy a cause. In the last letter which he wrote to
the Supreme Pontiff before his assassination are these words: “I implore
your apostolic benediction, Most Holy Father, having been re-elected
(though I did not deserve it) to the office of president of this Catholic
republic for another six years. Although the new term does not begin
till the 30th of August, the day on which I take the oath required by
the constitution, so that then only shall I need to give your Holiness
an official notification of my re-election, nevertheless I wish not to
delay in informing you of it, in order that I may obtain from Heaven
the strength and light which I more than any other one shall need, to
keep me a child of our Redeemer and loyal and obedient to his infallible
Vicar. And now that the lodges of neighboring countries, inspired by
Germany, vomit out against me all sorts of atrocious insults and horrible
calumnies, and even secretly lay plans for my assassination, I require
more than ever the divine assistance and protection to live and die in
defence of our holy religion and of this beloved republic which God has
given me to govern. How fortunate I am, Most Holy Father, to be hated
and calumniated for the sake of our divine Saviour; and what unspeakable
happiness would it be for me if your benediction should obtain for me
the grace to shed my blood for him who, though he was God, yet shed his
own on the cross for us!” This heroic desire of the fervent Christian
was granted. He was murdered by the enemies of Christ, in hatred of his
zeal for the restoration of the Christian state and of his fervent love
for the church. He is truly a martyr of Christ. Are not S. Wenceslaus of
Bohemia and S. Canute of Denmark numbered among the holy martyrs, for
the same cause? Both of them were killed in the precincts of the temple
of God; and Moreno was carried back to the church from which he had
only just departed, to breathe out his noble soul into the bosom of his
Creator.
II.
The object of Masonic civilization is society without God. The results
which it has succeeded in achieving, and which it deems of such
importance, are the separation of the state from the church, liberty
of worship, the withdrawal of public charities from religious objects,
the exclusion of the clergy from the work of education, the suppression
of religious orders, the supremacy of the civil law, and the setting
aside of the law of the Gospel. Only by these means, according to the
Masons, can the happiness of the people, the prosperity of the state,
and the increase of morality and learning be attained. These are their
fundamental maxims. Now, the difficulty was that Moreno had practically
shown, and was continuing to show more completely every day, that the
peace, prosperity, and greatness of a nation will be in proportion to
its devotion to God and its obedience to the church; that subjection
to God and his church, far from diminishing, ensures and increases,
the true liberty of man; that the influence of the clergy promotes not
only the cause of morality, but also that of letters and science; that
man’s temporal interests are never better cared for than when they are
subordinated to those which are eternal; and that love of country is
never so powerful as when it is consecrated by love of the church.
A man of the most distinguished talents, which had been most fully
cultivated at the University of Paris, Moreno had in his own country
occupied the most conspicuous positions. He had been a professor of the
natural sciences, rector of the university, representative, senator,
commander-in-chief of the army, dictator, and president of the republic.
In this last office, in which he would probably have been retained by
the nation through life, he showed what genius sanctified by religion
can accomplish. His first care was to establish peace throughout the
country, without which there can be no civil progress; and he succeeded
in doing so, not by compromises, as is now the fashion--not by making
a monstrous and abnormal amalgamation of parties and principles--but
by the consistent and firm assertion of the principles of morality and
justice, and by the open and unhesitating profession of Catholicity. His
success was so marked that Ecuador very soon arrived at such a perfect
state of tranquillity and concord as to seem a prodigy among the agitated
and turbulent republics in its neighborhood.
With the exception of some local and ineffectual attempts at revolution
during his first presidency, which were quelled by placing some of the
southern provinces in a state of siege for fifty days, Ecuador was
undisturbed by sedition during the whole of his long government. This
was partly due to the splendor of his private and public virtues, which
dissipated the clouds of envy and hatred, and gained for him the esteem
even of his political opponents. He was chaste, magnanimous, just,
impartial, and so well known for clearheadedness that the people often
stopped him on the streets to decide their disputes on the spot, and
accepted his opinion as final. His disinterestedness seems fabulous when
we think of the immoderate cupidity prevailing among modern politicians.
In his first six years he would not even draw his salary, being content
to live on the income of his own moderate fortune. In his second term he
accepted it, but spent it almost entirely in works of public utility. And
in such works he employed the whole of his time. When any one endeavored
to persuade him not to shorten his life by such continual labor, he used
to say: “If God wants me to rest, he will send me illness or death.”
Owing to this unwearying assiduity and his ardent love for the good of
his people, he was able to undertake and finish an amount of business
that would appear incredible, were not the evidence too strong to admit
of doubt. In No. 1,875 of the _Univers_ there is a catalogue of the
principal enterprises which he carried through in a brief period. They
are as follows:
A revision of the constitution.
The paying of the customs to the national treasury, instead of to the
provincial ones, as formerly.
National representation for the country as well as the cities.
The establishment of a fiscal court, and the organization of the courts
of justice.
The foundation of a great polytechnic school, which was partially
entrusted to the Jesuits.
The construction and equipment of an astronomical observatory, which
was built and directed by the Jesuits. On account of the equatorial
position of Quito, Garcia Moreno, who was well versed in the mathematical
sciences, wished to make this observatory equal to any in the world. He
bought most of the instruments with his own private funds.
Roads connecting different parts of the country. Garcia Moreno laid out
and nearly completed five great national roads. The principal one, that
from Guayaquil to Quito, is eighty leagues in length. It is paved, and
has one hundred and twenty bridges. It is a solid and stupendous work,
constructed in the face of almost insuperable difficulties.
The establishment of four new dioceses.
A concordat with the Holy See.
The reformation of the regular clergy; the restoration among them of a
common and monastic life.
The reconstruction of the army. The army had been a mere horde, without
organization, discipline, or uniform; the men hardly had shoes. Moreno
organized them on the French system, clothed, shod, and disciplined them;
now they are the model as well as the defence of the people.
The building of a light-house at Guayaquil. Previously there had been
none on the whole coast.
Reforms in the collection of the customs. Frauds put an end to, and the
revenues trebled.
Colleges in all the cities; schools in even the smallest villages--all
conducted by the Christian Brothers.
Schools for girls; Sisters of Charity, Ladies of the Sacred Heart,
Sisters of the Good Shepherd, of Providence, and Little Sisters of the
Poor.
Public hospitals. During his first presidency Moreno turned out the
director of the hospital at Quito, who had refused to receive a poor man
and was very negligent of his duties, and made himself director in his
stead. He visited the hospital every day, improved its arrangements, and
put it in good working order. He performed in it many acts of heroic
charity.
The maintenance and increase of lay congregations and orders. He was an
active member of the Congregation of the Poor.
The establishment of four museums.
The Catholic Protectory, a vast and magnificent school of arts and
trades, on the plan of S. Michele at Rome, and conducted by the Christian
Brothers.
Postal conventions with various foreign states.
The embellishment and restoration of the cities. Guayaquil, and
especially Quito, seemed as if they had been rebuilt.
And he accomplished all this, not only without increasing the taxes, but
even diminishing some of them. This is the reason why he was so much
beloved by the people; why they called him father of his country and
saviour of the republic. But it was also this which was his unpardonable
sin, which had to promptly receive a chastisement which should serve
as a warning for his successors, that they might not dare to imitate
his manner of government. For such a course as his was sure to ruin the
credit of Masonry in the popular mind.
III.
Moreno loved his country, and worked so hard for its good, because he was
truly and thoroughly religious. Every one who really loves God loves his
neighbor also; and he who loves God intensely loves his neighbor in the
same way, because he sees in him the image of God and the price of his
blood.
When he was a student in Paris he was admired for his piety. In his own
country, amid the continual cares and heavy responsibilities of his
office, he always found time to hear Mass every morning and say the
rosary every night. In his familiar conversation he spoke frequently of
God, of religion, of virtue, and with such fervor that all who heard
felt their hearts touched and moved by his words. Before beginning the
business of the day, he always made a visit to the church to implore
light from the Source of all wisdom; and he had just left it, as we
have said, when he met the ambuscade which was prepared for him. This
religious spirit produced in him a great zeal for the glory of God, and
that devotion to the Vicar of Christ which in him so much resembled the
affection of a child for his father. Let it suffice to say that when he
had to arrange the concordat with the Holy See, he sent his ambassador
to Rome with a blank sheet signed by himself, telling him to ask his
Holiness to write on it whatever seemed to him right and conducive to
the good of the church and the true welfare of the nation. Such was
the confidence which he reposed in the Pope, with whom politicians are
accustomed to treat as if he were an ambitious and designing foreign
prince, instead of being the father of all the faithful. When the
revolution entered Rome in triumph through the breach of Porta Pia,
Garcia Moreno was the only ruler in the world who dared to enter a solemn
protest against that sacrilegious invasion; and he obtained from his
Congress a considerable sum as a monthly subsidy and tribute of affection
to his Holiness.
But his piety toward God and his filial love to the church can best be
seen from the message to Congress which he finished a few hours before
his death, and which was found on his dead body, steeped in his blood.
Although it is somewhat long for the limits of an article, we think that
we ought to present it to our readers as an imperishable monument of true
piety and enlightened policy, and as a lesson for the false politicians
of the present day and of days to come.
The message is as follows:
“SENATORS AND DEPUTIES: I count among the greatest of the great
blessings which God has, in the inexhaustible abundance of
his mercy, granted to our republic, that of seeing you here
assembled under his protection, in the shadow of his peace,
which he has granted and still grants to us, while we are
nothing and can do nothing, and only give in return for his
paternal goodness inexcusable and shameful ingratitude.
“It is only a few years since Ecuador had to repeat daily
these sad words which the liberator Bolivar addressed in his
last message to the Congress of 1830: ‘I blush to have to
acknowledge that independence is the only good which we have
acquired, and that we have lost all the rest in acquiring it.’
“But since the time when, placing all our hope in God, we
escaped from the torrent of impiety and apostasy which
overwhelms the world in this age of blindness; since 1869, when
we reformed ourselves into a truly Catholic nation, everything
has been on a course of steady and daily improvement, and the
prosperity of our dear country has been continually increasing.
“Ecuador was not long ago a body from which the life-blood was
ebbing, and which was even, like a corpse, already a prey to
a horrible swarm of vermin which the liberty of putrefaction
engendered in the darkness of the tomb. But to-day, at the
command of that sovereign voice which called Lazarus from the
sepulchre, it has returned to life, though it still has not
entirely cast off the winding-sheet and bandages--that is to
say, the remains and effects of the misery and corruption in
which it had been buried.
“To justify what I have said, it will suffice for me to give
a short sketch of the progress which has been made in these
last two years, referring you to the various departments of
the government for documentary and detailed information. And
that you may see exactly how far we have advanced in this
period of regeneration, I shall compare our present condition
with that from which we started; not for our own glory and
self-gratulation, but to glorify Him to whom we owe everything,
and whom we adore as our Redeemer and our Father, our Protector
and our God.”
Here follows an enumeration of all the improvements which had
been made. He continues:
“We owe to the perfect liberty which the church has among
us, and to the apostolic zeal of its excellent prelates, the
reformation of the clergy, the amendment of morals, and the
reduction of crimes; which is so great that in our population
of a million there are not enough criminals to fill the
penitentiary.
“To the church also we owe those religious corporations
which produce such an abundance of excellent results by the
instruction of childhood and youth, and by the succor which
they give so liberally to the sick and to the destitute. We are
also debtors to these religious for the renewal of the spirit
of piety in this year of jubilee and of sanctification, and
for the conversion to Christianity and civilization of nine
thousand savages in the eastern province, in which, on account
of its vast extent, there are good reasons for establishing a
second vicariate. If you authorize me to ask the Holy See for
this foundation, we will then consult as to what measures to
take to promote the commerce of this province, and to put an
end to the selfish speculations and the violent exactions to
which its poor inhabitants have been a prey by reason of the
cruelty of inhuman merchants. The laborers, however, for this
field are not now to be had; and that those which we shall
have may be properly trained, it is right that you should
give a yearly subsidy to our venerable and zealous archbishop,
to assist him in building the great seminary which he has not
hesitated to begin, trusting in the protection of Heaven and in
our co-operation.
“Do not forget, legislators, that our little successes would be
ephemeral and without fruit if we had not founded the social
order of our republic upon the rock, always resisted and always
victorious, of the Catholic Church. Its divine teaching, which
neither men nor nations can neglect and be saved, is the rule
of our institutions, the law of our laws. Docile and faithful
children of our venerable, august, and infallible Pontiff,
whom all the great ones of the earth are abandoning, and who
is being oppressed by vile, cowardly, and impious men, we have
continued to send him monthly the little contribution which you
voted in 1873. Though our weakness obliges us to remain passive
spectators of his slow martyrdom, let us hope that this poor
gift may at least be a proof of our sympathy and affection, and
a pledge of our obedience and fidelity.
“In a few days the term for which I was elected in 1869
will expire. The republic has enjoyed six years of peace,
interrupted only by a revolt of a few days in 1872 at Riobamba,
of the natives against the whites; and in these six years it
has advanced rapidly on the path of true progress under the
visible protection of divine Providence. The results achieved
would certainly have been greater if I had possessed the
abilities for government which unfortunately I lack, or if all
that was needed to accomplish good was ardently to desire it.
“If I have committed faults, I ask pardon for them a thousand
times, and beg it with tears from all my countrymen, feeling
confident that they have been unintentional. If, on the
contrary, you think that in any respect I have succeeded,
give the honor of the success, in the first place, to God
and to his Immaculate Mother, to whom are committed the
inexhaustible treasures of his mercy; and, in the second place,
to yourselves, to the people, to the army, and to all those
who, in the different branches of the government, have assisted
me with intelligence and fidelity in the fulfilment of my
difficult duties.
“GABRIEL GARCIA MORENO.
“QUITO, August, 1875.”
That is the way that a really Catholic ruler can speak, even in this
XIXth century. It seems, while we read his words, as if we were listening
to Ferdinand of Castile or some other one of the saintly kings of the
most prosperous days of Christianity. With great justice, then, did the
government of Ecuador, when it published this message--which was found,
as we have said, on Moreno’s dead body--append to it the following note:
“The message which we have just given is the solemn voice of one who is
dead; or, better, it is his last will and testament actually sealed with
his own blood; for our noble president had just written it with his own
hand when he was assailed by his murderers. Its last words are those of a
dying father who, blessing his children, turns for the last time toward
them his eyes, darkened by the shadow of death, and asks pardon of them,
as if he had been doing anything during all their lives but loading them
with benefits. Deeply moved and distressed by grief, we seek in vain for
words adequate to express our love and veneration for him. Posterity
no doubt will honor the undying memory of the great ruler, the wise
politician, the noble patriot, and the saintly defender of the faith who
has been so basely assassinated. His country, worthily represented by
their present legislators, will shed tears over this tomb which contains
such great virtues and such great hopes, and will gratefully record on
imperishable tablets the glorious name of this her son, who, regardless
of his own blood and life, lived and died only for her.”
This splendid eulogy is an echo of the eternal benediction and a
reflection of the brilliant crown which we cannot doubt that God has
given to this his latest martyr.
IV.
The reader will see that this message of Garcia Moreno contains a true
and genuine scheme of Christian government which he applied in the
republic of Ecuador, in direct opposition to the ideas and aspirations
of modern liberalism. Every point of it is in most marked contrast to
the liberalist programme. At some risk of repetition, we will here make
a short comparison between the two, on account of the importance of the
conclusions which all prudent men can draw from it.
Moreno begins with God, and puts him at the head of the government of
his people; liberalism would have the state atheistic, and is ashamed
even to mention the name of God in its public documents. Moreno desires
an intimate union between the state and the Catholic Church, declaring
that the social order must be founded on the church, and that her divine
teaching must be the rule of human institutions and the law of civil
laws; liberalism, on the other hand, not only separates the state from
the church, but even raises it above her, and makes the civil laws the
standard in harmony with which the ecclesiastical laws must be framed.
It even would subject the most essential institutions of the church to
the caprice of man. Moreno desires full liberty for the bishops, and
ascribes to this liberty the reform of the clergy and the good morals
of the people; liberalism wants to fetter episcopal action, excites
the inferior clergy to rebellion against their prelates, and endeavors
to withdraw the people from the influence of either. Moreno not only
supports but multiplies religious communities; liberalism suppresses
them. Moreno respects ecclesiastical property, and promotes by the
resources of the state the foundation of new seminaries, saying that
without them it will not be possible worthily to fill the ranks of the
sacred ministry; liberalism confiscates the goods of the church, closes
the seminaries, and sends the young Levites to the barracks, to be
educated in the dissipation and license of military life. Moreno confides
to the clergy and to the religious orders the training and instruction
of youth; liberalism secularizes education, and insists on the entire
exclusion of the religious element. Moreno removes from his Catholic
nation the wiles and scandals of false religion; liberalism promulgates
freedom of worship, and opens the door to every heresy in faith and
to every corruption in morals. Moreno, finally, sees in himself the
weakness inherent in man, and gives God credit for all the good which he
accomplishes; while liberalism, full of satanic pride, believes itself
capable of everything, and places all its confidence in the natural
powers of man. The antagonism between the two systems is, in short,
universal and absolute.
Now, what is the verdict of experience? It is that the application
of Moreno’s system has resulted in peace, prosperity, the moral and
material welfare of the people--in a word, social happiness. On the
contrary, the application of the liberalist system has produced discord,
general misery, enormous taxation, immorality among the people, and
public scandals, and has driven society to the verge of destruction and
dissolution. The liberty which it has given has been well defined by
Moreno; it is the liberty of a corpse, the liberty to rot.
And at this juncture the infamous wickedness and the despicable logic of
the liberalist party can no longer be concealed. It has laid it down as
certain that the principles of the middle ages, as it calls them--which
are the true Catholic principles, the principles affirmed by our Holy
Father Pius IX. in his Syllabus--are not applicable to modern times, and
can no longer give happiness to nations. But here is a ruler, Garcia
Moreno by name, who gives the lie to this grovelling falsehood, and shows,
by the irresistible evidence of facts, that the happiness of his people
has actually come simply from the application of these principles. What is
the answer of the liberalist sect to this manifest confutation of their
theory? First, it endeavors to cry down its formidable adversary by
invective and calumny; and then, finding that this does not suffice to
remove him from public life, it murders him. This is the only means it
has to prove its thesis; and, having made use of it, it begins to shriek
louder than before that Catholic principles cannot be adapted to the
progress of this age. No, we agree that they cannot, if you are going to
kill every one who adapts them. What use is it to argue with a sect so
malicious and perverse? O patience of God and of men, how basely are you
abused!
A REVIVAL IN FROGTOWN.
There was quite an excitement in Frogtown. The Rev. Eliphalet Notext,
“The Great Revivalist, who had made more converts than any other man in
England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the United States and Territories,
and the British Provinces of North America,” was to “open a three weeks’
campaign” in the town.
Now, Frogtown prided itself on being the wickedest little town in
the West. Its inhabitants claimed for it the enviable distinction of
being “the fastest little village of its size in the United States”--a
weakness common to most small towns. This pride in vice is a widespread
weakness. The lean and slippered pantaloon will wag his fallen chaps
and give evident signs of pleasant titillation when some shank-shrunken
contemporary tells “what a rascal the dog was in his youth.”
Well, the Frogtowners flattered themselves that Brother Notext would
find their burgh a very hard nut to crack. Brother Notext was not a
theologian. He was not a scholar. He was not a preacher. In truth, he
was almost illiterate. But he understood the “business” of getting up
revivals. He knew how to create a sensation. He could, at least, achieve
a success of curiosity, as the French say.
He began with the newspapers, of course. He contrived to have them say
something about him and his “work” in every issue. He was not particular
whether what they said of him was favorable or unfavorable. Indeed,
he rather preferred that some of them should abuse him roundly. Abuse
sometimes helped him more than praise. It made some people his friends
through a spirit of contradiction. It appealed to the pugnacious
instincts of some “professors of religion.” It enabled him to hint that
the inimical editors were papal myrmidons, Jesuit emissaries, etc., etc.
The Rev. Eliphalet was really an excellent organizer. He had been
originally the business manager of a circus. His advertisements, his
posters, his hand-bills, in his old occupation, were prepared with all
the gorgeous imagery of the East. He did not forget his old tactics in
his new profession. Immediately on his arrival in Frogtown he grappled
the newspapers. He begged, bullied, or badgered the editors until they
noticed him. He set the Christian Juveniles and the kindred societies to
work, with whom, of course, there was no difficulty. In a couple of days
he succeeded in drawing around him the clergymen of every denomination,
except the Episcopalian and Unitarian. Some of these, however, went much
against their will. The Episcopalian minister--a gentle, amiable man--was
very loath at first; but the pressure brought to bear upon him was too
strong. He finally succumbed and joined in what was called a Union
Christian Meeting of all the Protestant congregations. This important
point achieved, Mr. Notext had three of the “best workers” in each
congregation selected. These he sent among the people to raise the sinews
of war, without which no campaign, whether sacred or profane, can be
conducted to a successful issue. Mr. Notext’s terms were reasonable--only
three hundred dollars a week and found. A man must live; and when a man
works hard--as Mr. Notext undoubtedly did--he must live well, or he
cannot stand the strain on his physical and mental strength. Then, there
were blank weeks when he had no revival in hand, and probably a hotel
bill to pay. Taking these things into consideration, any reasonable
person will allow that three hundred dollars a week and found was not an
exorbitant price.
Mr. Notext had a large tent which the profane said had been formerly
used in his old business. It was pitched in a vacant lot within the city
limits, and could accommodate about fifteen hundred persons. Mr. Notext
prevailed on the clergymen who united with him to close their churches
on the first Sunday of his revival. On the previous Friday he gathered
around him a number of male and female enthusiasts. Accompanied by these
people, organized in squads and led by the regular revival practitioners
who did what is profanely termed the “side-show” business in all Mr.
Notext’s tours, he sang hymns in front of every drinking-saloon in the
town. The instrumental accompaniment to the singing was furnished by a
melodeon, which was carried about in a one-horse cart.
On Sunday the union meetings began, and, notwithstanding a heavy
rain, the tent was full. A large platform had been erected inside,
and near the door was a table on which were exposed for sale a great
variety of contributions to religious literature, all by one author,
who had evidently tried every string of the religious lyre. There were
collections of hymns by the Rev. Mr. Notext; tracts by the Rev. Mr.
Notext; sermons by the Rev. Mr. Notext; tales for the young by the Rev.
Mr. Notext; appeals to the old by the Rev. Mr. Notext; reasons for the
middle-aged by the Rev. Mr. Notext, etc., etc. There were photographs, in
every style, of the Rev. Mr. Notext, as well as likenesses of remarkable
converts who had been remarkable rascals until they “got religion”
through the efforts of the Rev. Mr. Notext.
On the platform were seated the shepherds of most of the flocks in
Frogtown. Some among them, it is true, did not seem quite at home in that
situation, but they had to be there. In the centre of the platform was an
organ, which furnished the instrumental music. On each side of the organ
seats were arranged for a volunteer choir. Fully half those present were
children.
The Rev. Eliphalet Notext was introduced to the audience by the minister
of the Methodist church. The revivalist was a stout, fair-haired,
fresh-colored, rather pleasant-looking man, inclined to corpulency,
evidently not an ascetic, and gifted with no inconsiderable share of
physical energy and magnetism.
“I wish all persons who can sing to come on the platform and occupy the
seats to the right and left of the organ,” he began.
No movement was made in response to this call. It was repeated with a
better result. A dozen young ladies summoned up enough courage to mount
the platform.
“This will never do!” cried Mr. Notext. “I want every person present who
can sing right here on this stand. We can’t get along without music and
plenty of it.”
“Brethren,” he continued, turning toward the clergymen on the platform,
“you know the singers in your congregations; go among them and send them
up here. Everybody must put his shoulder to the wheel in the great work
of bringing souls to Jesus.”
The brethren meekly did as they were bid. They soon succeeded in filling
the seats reserved for the singers. These numbered about one hundred.
“That’s more like it,” said Mr. Notext approvingly. “Now, my friends, we
will begin by singing a hymn. I want everybody to join in.” (A nod to the
organist, who began to play.)
The singing was rather timid at first, but, led by Mr. Notext, the
singers rapidly gained confidence, and soon rolled forth in full chorus.
Having fairly launched them, their leader, after the first verse, left
them to take care of themselves. The singing was really good. The rich
volume of harmony drowned the commonplace melody and the vulgar words.
Thus Brother Notext was successful in the production of his first effect.
It was evident that he depended much on the singing. There is nothing
like a grand mass of choral music to excite the sensibilities. After two
or three hymns, the revivalist had his audience in a highly emotional
condition. “I want all the children together in front!” shouted Mr.
Notext. “_Ad_ults [the accent on the first syllable] will retire to the
back seats. Don’t stop the music! Keep up the singing! Go on! go on!”
Then he ran to the organ, whispered something to the organist, and led
off with
“Oh! you must be a lover of the Lord,
Or you won’t go to heaven when you die,”
leaving the singers to sing it out for themselves after the first two or
three lines.
It took some time to get all the children to the front. If the music
flagged, Mr. Notext shouted to the singers to “keep it up.” From time to
time he would rush to the organ, pick up a hymn-book in a frantic manner,
and lead off with a new hymn, waving his hands in cadence, but, with a
due regard for his lungs, not singing a note more than was absolutely
necessary to start the other singers afresh.
The fathers and mothers of the little ones, softened by the music, looked
with moistened eyes on their children as the latter took their seats. The
American people are very fond of children when they are old enough to
walk and talk and be interesting. Mr. Notext was alive to this fact. Even
the worst criminal or the most cynical man of the world cannot help being
touched while music charms his ears and his eyes look on the beautiful
spectacle of childish innocence. Mr. Notext evidently knew the more
amiable weaknesses of human nature. He appealed to the senses and the
affections, and won over the fathers and mothers through the children.
“Now, my little friends,” said Mr. Notext, “I wish you all to keep
perfectly silent while I am talking to you. This first meeting is
especially for you.”
There was considerable buzzing among the little ones.
“I must have silence, if I am to do anything with these children,” said
Mr. Notext rather testily, and in a tone which showed that he would not
scruple to apply the birch to his little friends if they did not keep
quiet. “The slightest noise distracts their attention. There are some
boys to the right there who are still talking! I wish some one would stop
them.”
A softly-stepping gentleman with long hair and green goggles went to the
designated group, remonstrated with, and finally succeeded in silencing,
them. Then Mr. Notext began his sermon to the children. He told the
story of the Passion in a manner which, though it inexpressibly shocked
Christians of the old-fashioned kind who happened to be present, was
exceedingly dramatic--“realistic” in the highest degree, to borrow a
word from the modern play-bill. Suddenly he broke off and said rather
excitedly:
“There is a boy on the fourth bench who persists in talking. I must have
absolute silence, or I cannot hold the attention of these children.
The slightest noise distracts them and takes their minds away from the
picture I am endeavoring to present to them. It is that red-haired boy!
Will somebody please to take him away?” Several pious gentlemen bore
down on the poor little red-haired urchin, and all chance of “getting
religion” was taken away from him for the nonce by his summary removal.
When silence was restored, Mr. Notext resumed the story. When describing
how the divine Victim was buffeted and spat upon, he administered to
himself sounding slaps on the face, now with the left hand, now with the
right. He placed an imaginary crown of thorns on his head, pressed the
sharp points into his forehead, and, passing the open fingers of both
hands over his closed eyes and down his face, traced the streams of blood
trickling from the cruel wounds. Tears already rolled down the cheeks of
the little ones. When he reached the nailing to the cross, he produced a
large spike, exhibited it to the children, and went through the semblance
of driving it into his flesh. An outburst of sobs interrupted him. Some
of the children screamed in very terror. The desired effect was produced.
Many fathers and mothers, touched by the emotion and terror of their
children, wept in sympathy with them.
“Now the music!” shouted Mr. Notext, stamping with impatience, as if he
wanted a tardy patient to swallow a Sedlitz-powder in the proper moment
of effervescence. “Now the music!” And he led off with
“Oh! you must be a lover of the Lord,
Or you won’t go to heaven when you die!”
He shouted to the “workers” to go among the people and ask them to “come
to Jesus.” A crowd of “workers,” some professional, some enthusiastic
volunteers, broke loose upon the audience. They seized people by the
hands. They embraced them. They inquired: “How do you feel now? Do you
not feel that Jesus is calling you?” They begged them to come to Jesus at
once. They asked them if they were “Ker-istians.”
One of the workers met two gentlemen who entered together and were
evidently present through curiosity. Of the first, who seemed to be a
cool, keen, self-poised business man, the worker asked the stereotyped
question:
“Are you a Ker-istian?”
“Of course, of course,” said the self-possessed business man.
The worker passed on, perfectly satisfied with the off-hand declaration.
He repeated the question to the gentleman’s companion, who, possessed of
less assurance, hesitated and humbly replied:
“I trust so.”
The worker immediately grappled the sensitive gentleman, much to his
mortification, and it was some time before he succeeded in effecting
his escape, regretting, doubtless, that he had not made as prompt and
satisfactory a profession of faith as that of his companion.
The “inquiry meeting,” as the exercises toward the close were named, was
continued until late in the afternoon. When the children were dismissed,
they were instructed to beg their parents to come to Jesus--to entreat
them, with tears if necessary, until they consented. A Presbyterian
gentleman of the old school, describing his sensations after the meeting
was over, said:
“I cannot deny that I was affected. I felt tears coming to my eyes--why,
I could not tell. The effect, however, was entirely physical. My reason
had nothing to do with it. It condemned the whole thing as merely
calculated to get up an unhealthy excitement, which, even if not
injurious, would be fleeting in its effect. I noticed some nervous women
almost worked up into spasms. As to the children, they were goaded into
a state of nervousness and terror which was pitiable to see. I can only
compare my own condition to that of a man who had drunk freely. While
the effect lasted I was capable of making a fool of myself, being all
the while aware that I was doing so. Sunlight and air have dispelled the
intoxication, and now nothing remains but nausea.
“I am disgusted with such claptrap, and ashamed of myself for having been
affected by it, however temporarily and slightly.”
The progress made on the first Sunday of the revival was duly chronicled
in the newspapers of the day following. It was announced that hundreds of
children had been awakened to a sense of their sinful condition. A little
girl--four years old--had recognized that she was thoroughly steeped
in sin. She had had no idea of the condition of her soul until she was
roused to it by Mr. Notext’s preaching. She was now perfectly happy. She
had experienced religion. She knew she was forgiven. She had gone to
Jesus, and Jesus had come to her. She had sought Mr. Notext’s lodgings,
leading her father with one hand and her mother with the other.
Charley Biggs--the well-known drunken alderman--was among the converted.
He had “got religion,” and was resolved henceforth to touch the
time-honored toddy nevermore.
A belated “local” of one of the newspapers, while returning to his
lodgings on the previous evening, had his coat-tail pulled, much to his
surprise, by a little girl about six years old.
“Please, sir,” she asked, “do you know Jesus?”
The “local” was struck dumb.
“O sir!” she continued, “won’t you please come to Jesus?”
This was enough. The hard heart-of the “local” was touched. He sobbed, he
wept, he cried aloud. He fell upon his knees. The little girl fell on
hers. They sang:
“Come to Jesus,
Come to Jesus,
Come to Jesus just now,” etc.
When the “local” rose, after the conclusion of the singing, he took
the little girl’s hand and went whither she led him. He, too, had “got
religion”--somewhat as one gets a _coup de soleil_ or a stroke of
paralysis.
The opposition dailies mildly called attention to the purely emotional
character of the effects produced. They expressed their fears that the
moral and physical result of factitious excitement on minds of tender
years might be the reverse of healthy. The next day the melodeon was
carted about again and the singing continued on the sidewalks and in
front of the drinking-saloons. Mr. Notext’s machinery was in full blast.
The meeting on the second evening was devoted principally to grown
people. The tent was full. The choir was strengthened by additional
voices, and the music was good of its kind.
After half a dozen hymns had been sung, Mr. Notext began his sermon--by
courtesy so-called. He first spoke of the number of persons he had
converted at home and abroad. For he had been “abroad,” as he took care
to let his audience know. He had been the guest and the favored companion
of the Duchess of Skippington, of the Earl of Whitefriars, of Lord This
and Lady That, and the Countess of Thingumy. In Scotland and in Ireland
immense crowds followed him and “got religion.” He converted three
thousand people in a single town in Ireland. Since the meeting on the
previous day, many children, and many adults as well, had visited him at
his lodgings. Some who came to the tent “to make fun” went away full of
religion. He would now let a dear little friend of his tell his own story
in his own way.
A red-haired youngster, about thirteen, was introduced to the audience as
the nephew of a prominent and well-known official in a neighboring town.
(It was afterwards stated, by the way, that the official in question had
not a nephew in the world. No doubt the youngster imposed on Mr. Notext.)
If ever there were a thoroughly “bad boy,” this youngster was one, or--as
may be very possible--his face belied him atrociously. Mr. Notext placed
his arm dramatically--affectionately, rather--around the young rogue’s
neck, and led him to the front of the platform. The boy looked at the
audience with a leer, half-impudent, half-jocular, and then gave his
experiences glibly in a very harsh treble:
“When first I heard that Rev. Mr. Notext was going to get up a revival, I
joked about it with other boys, and said he couldn’t convert me; and the
night of the first meeting I said to the other boys--who were bad boys,
too--for us to go along and make fun. And so we did. And I came to laugh
at Mr. Notext and to make fun. And somehow--I don’t know how it was--I
got religion, and I was converted; and now I am very happy, and I love
Mr. Notext, and I am going with him to Smithersville when he gets through
here. And I am very happy since I was converted and became a good boy.”
(Sensation among the audience, and music by the choir in response to Mr.
Notext’s call.)
Another juvenile convert was brought forward. He repeated substantially
the same story as his predecessor, though more diffidently. (More music
by the choir.)
Mr. Notext now told the affecting story of “little Jimmy.” Little Jimmy
was a native of Hindostan. He lived in some town ending in _an_. There
was in that town a missionary school. Jimmy’s master was a very bad
man--cruel, tyrannical. He forbade Jimmy to go to the mission-school.
But Jimmy went, nevertheless, whenever he could. The master was a true
believer in the national religion of Hindostan. He believed that Jimmy
would go to perdition if he left his ancestral faith to embrace the
national religion--or rather the governmental religion--of Great Britain.
Jimmy would return from his visits to the mission-school in a very happy
mood, singing as he went:
“Yes, I love Jesus,
Yes, I love Jesus,
I know, I know I do,” etc.
Mr. Notext gave an operatic rendering of the scene of Jimmy going home
singing the above words. One day the master heard Jimmy, and was roused
to a state of fury. He forbade the boy to sing the song. But Jimmy would
sing it (Mr. Notext did not say whether Jimmy sang the hymn in English
or Hindostanee). Then the brutal master took an enormous cowhide--or
the Hindostanee punitive equivalent thereto--and belabored poor Jimmy.
But Jimmy continued to sing, though the tears rolled down his cheeks
from pain. And the master flogged; and Jimmy sang. And still the master
flogged and flogged. And still Jimmy sang and sang and sang. It was like
the famous fight in Arkansas, wherein the combatants “fit and fit and
fit.” But there must be an end of everything--even of an Arkansas fight.
The struggle lasted for hours. Exhausted nature finally gave way, and
poor little Jimmy died under the lash, singing with his last breath:
“Yes, I love Jesus,
Yes, I love Jesus,
I know, I know I do.”
“Now, my friends,” said Mr. Notext, “I want you all to stand up for Jesus
and sing poor little Jimmy’s song.” And Mr. Notext led off. The choir
followed his example; but the audience remained seated.
“I want to know,” said Mr. Notext rather testily, “how many Christians
there are in this assembly. I want every one of them to stand up!”
Several persons now stood up, and gradually the action began to spread,
like yawning in a lecture-room. There were still many, however, who
had not hearkened to Mr. Notext’s summons to stand up. He called
attention to them, and bade some of the brethren go to them and talk
them into an erect position. Some of the recalcitrants, evidently to
avoid importunity, stood up. The rest also stood up, and hurriedly left
the tent, followed by an angry scowl from Mr. Notext. After a little
hesitation, he said: “We will now once more sing little Jimmy’s hymn.”
And when the hymn was sung, the meeting dispersed.
Next morning the friendly newspapers chronicled the wonderful success
of Mr. Notext’s efforts. The number of converts was miraculously large.
Two thousand persons had stood up for Jesus. The meetings were continued
during the week. The _modus operandi_ was about the same. Mr. Notext
repeated himself so often that interest began to languish and his _coups
de théâtre_ to grow flat and stale. When he was at a loss for words to
continue one of his disjointed discourses, he took refuge in music and
hymns.
“Brethren, let us sing:
“Come to Jesus!
Come to Jesus!
Come to Jesus just now,” etc.
When his vulgar and often unintentionally blasphemous exhortations
failed to hold the attention of his hearers, and Morpheus was making
fight against him in sundry corners of the tent, he would suddenly call
in his loudest tones on all present to stand up for Jesus. In cases of
very marked inattention, he would summon his hearers, and particularly
the children, to write down their names for Jesus in a large book kept
for that purpose by the great revivalist. This stroke generally roused
the audience pretty thoroughly. But when the children had written their
names in the book three or four times, they began to grow tired of the
practice, thinking that, if these writing lessons were continued, they
might as well be at school.
In the beginning of the second week there were unmistakable signs of
impending collapse. The revival received a momentary impulse, however,
from the opposition of another “Reverend Doctor,” who challenged Mr.
Notext to controversy. This aroused the natural desire to witness a
“fight” which lives in the human heart. But the desire was not gratified,
owing to Mr. Notext’s refusal to accept the challenge. His failure to
exhibit a proper polemical pugnacity was a very great detriment to him.
Indeed, the end of the second week showed a marked falling off in the
number of persons present at the nightly meetings. Then the sinews of
war began to fail. The weekly wage of the great revivalist could not
be raised, though he thrice sent back “the best workers” in all the
congregations to make additional efforts to raise the stipulated sum.
The Rev. Dr. Notext did not tarry very much longer in Frogtown. He
had barely turned his back upon the little town before every trace of
the “great tidal wave of the revival” (as the journals called it) had
disappeared. The youthful converts had gone back to their peg tops, their
kites, and their china alleys, and Alderman Charley Biggs was again
taking his whiskey-toddies in the time-honored way.
THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE.
The President’s message, so far as it deals with the school question and
the taxation of church property, is the sequel to the speech which he
delivered at Des Moines. The article on that oration which appeared in
our last number was, to some extent, an exposition of our views on the
school question.
We are sure that those views, when carefully examined, will be
found to contain the only solution in harmony with the spirit of
free institutions. We are willing to submit to the fairness of our
fellow-citizens, and to wait until time and thought have matured their
judgment on the following questions:
1. Who has a right to direct the education of children--their parents or
the government?
2. Whether, in a republic whose form of government depends more than
any other upon the virtue of its citizens, it is better to have moral
instruction given in abundance, or to have this species of instruction
restricted to the narrowest limits?
3. Whether it is the design of a free government to legislate for all, or
whether public institutions--the common schools, for instance--are to be
directed only for the benefit of certain classes?
4. Whether moneys raised by taxation for the common good should not be so
applied as to satisfy the conscientious demands of all citizens?
5. Whether taxation otherwise directed than for the good of all is not a
violation of the maxim, “Taxation without representation is tyranny”?
6. Whether Catholics have or have not shown zeal for education, both
primary and scientific?
7. Whether they have or have not shed their blood in defence of the
nation, or furnished any of its great leaders in peace and war?
8. Whether any instance can be shown in which they have entered or
inhabited any country on equal terms with Protestants and infidels, and
have abused their power to hamper or persecute their fellow-citizens?
9. Whether, in paying their taxes and supporting their own schools to
the best of their power, peacefully discussing the question of public
welfare and their own rights, Catholics are acting as loyal citizens or
as factious disturbers of good-will and kindly feeling among neighbors?
10. Finally, whether, in consideration of the foregoing, our views are
not entitled to respectful consideration?
We have no doubt whatever that when the thoughtful and just men of our
day and race have duly pondered upon these subjects, we shall fully agree
with their deliberate reply.
At no time in the history of our country will it be found that Catholics
have introduced religion into the arena of political discussion, and any
attempt to do so will meet with failure. In this they are in perfect
accord with the principles underlying our institutions and the genuine
spirit of this country. If, at this moment, the rancor of ancient bigotry
and fanaticism or modern hatred of Christianity has attempted to awaken a
political conflict on religious grounds, while it refuses to admit a calm
consideration of Catholic claims, we appeal from Philip drunk to Philip
sober.
In the meantime, we shall assume, that there are those who wish to hear
more with regard to our principles and convictions. We shall endeavor to
remove all obscurity on the questions now under discussion, and to reply
to whatever reasonable objections may be made against our principles.
With regard to the taxation of church property, we await the action of
the political world. Some politicians, whose “vaulting ambition” is of
that kind which “o’erleaps itself,” would introduce this question into
political discussion in order to draw off the attention of the American
people from the real, present issues in their politics. We ask for no
innovations; but if such be made, let there be no discrimination. We
stand before the law as do all other religious denominations. “Let us
have peace” were the memorable words spoken at a memorable time by a man
who to a large extent held the future of this country in his hands. Those
words held, and hold still, the germs of the wisest policy. We repeat
them now, and add, if we cannot have peace, let us at least have fair
play. If the projectors and advocates of this innovation suppose that, in
the event of its being carried out, they will thereby worst the Catholic
Church, their action in the end will be found to resemble that of the man
who cut off his nose to spite his neighbor.
Since these words were written, four letters have appeared in the New
York _Times_ under the heading, “Should Church Property be Taxed?” and
over the signature of George H. Andrews. The writer is not a Catholic.
His clear, concise reasons against the taxation of church property, as
recommended by the President in his message, will have the more weight
with non-Catholic readers on that account. It is singular, yet natural,
to see how his argument strengthens our own position on the question in
a number of ways, particularly as regards the suicidal policy of many
who, through hatred or fear of the Catholic Church, may be induced to
commit themselves to a measure which would prove an irreparable mischief
to their own church or churches. Passing by the many able and suggestive
points in Mr. Andrews’ letters, we take just such as more immediately
bear on the thoughts thrown out by ourselves.
By the census of 1870 the value of all kinds of church property in the
United States belonging to the leading denominations was placed as
follows:
Methodist, $69,854,121
Roman Catholic, 60,935,556
Presbyterian, 53,265,256
Baptist, 41,608,198
Episcopalian, 36,514,549
Congregational, 25,069,698
Reformed, 16,134,470
Lutheran, 14,917,747
Unitarian, 6,282,675
Universalist, 5,692,325
Others, 24,000,000
-------------
$354,324,595
“From these it appears,” says Mr. Andrews, “that the relative proportion
of each denomination to the whole is substantially as follows:
“Methodist, one-fifth of the aggregate; Roman Catholic, one-sixth
of the aggregate; Presbyterian, one-seventh of the aggregate;
Baptist, one-ninth of the aggregate; Episcopalian, one-tenth of the
aggregate; Congregational, one-fourteenth of the aggregate; Reformed,
one-twenty-second of the aggregate; Lutheran, one-twenty-third of the
aggregate; Unitarian, one-fifty-ninth of the aggregate; Universalist,
one-sixtieth of the aggregate.”
And here is the case in a nutshell: “To me it seems obvious,” comments
Mr. Andrews, on reviewing his figures, “that the expectation is that
those who belong or are allied to other sects will, from dislike to or
fear of the Roman Catholic Church, impose a burden upon it, even if in
doing so they are obliged to assume an equal burden themselves; or, in
other words, that the owners of $294,000,000 of church property will
subject it to taxation in order to impose a similar tax upon the owners
of $60,000,000 of church property. So that the adherents of every other
sect, at variance among themselves about sundry matters of doctrine and
practice, essential and non-essential, can be brought to act in concert,
and to give effect to a common spirit of hostility to Roman Catholic
doctrine, to Roman Catholic exclusiveness, Roman Catholic aggression, and
Roman Catholic influence, by placing a tax upon Roman Catholic Church
property--in effect, arousing a spirit of persecution, qualified by the
condition imposed by the Constitution, that the would-be persecutor must
share in the penalty he may succeed in imposing upon the object of his
dislike.” Which is precisely what we have characterized as “cutting off
one’s nose to spite a neighbor.”
May we presume to ask whether the taxation of church property will reduce
the expenses of the general government, render its officials more honest,
and purify our legislative halls? These are the duties of the hour. Here
are the issues of our politics. But a profound silence regarding them
reigns in the official utterance. Are the projectors of the new policy
afraid to face them? Does their conscience make cowards of them? Or is it
that they are playing the part of the cuttle-fish?
Up to this period the state and all religious denominations have advanced
peaceably to prosperity, and there have been no real grounds of complaint
on any side. At least we have heard of none publicly. What, then, has
brought about this sudden change? Who has called for it? Why should
it be sprung upon us at this moment? No danger threatens from this
quarter. There is not visible on our political horizon even the “cloud
no bigger than a man’s hand.” Catholics, when only a handful, never
dreamed of objecting to the exemption from taxation of the property of
other religious denominations, or to the aid which their benevolent
institutions received. Can it be the rapid development of Catholicity
here which has prompted the proposed innovation? Are these exemptions,
which have been handed down from the time of our fathers, to be altered
because Catholicity has had her share in the common progress? Let truth
and error grapple on a fair and open field. Is there fear that truth will
be worsted in the struggle?
If the exemption of church property from taxation be so great an evil
and danger to the country, those whom Americans generally are content to
regard as their great statesmen must have been very short-sighted men
after all to pass by, one after another, so glaring an evil. For the
growth of church property is not a thing of to-day. In his message the
President says that he believes that “in 1850 the church property of the
United States which paid no tax, municipal or State, amounted to about
eighty-three million dollars. In 1860 the amount had doubled. In 1875 it
is about one thousand million dollars.”
Mr. Andrews questions the estimate for 1875 on the ground that it is too
high. But let that pass. The following table, given by Mr. Andrews, shows
the increase in value, according to the census, of the property of the
ten principal churches for the last twenty years:
1850 1860 1870
Methodist, $14,825,670 $33,683,371 $69,854,121
Roman Catholic, 9,256,753 26,744,119 60,985,556
Presbyterian, 14,543,780 24,227,359 53,265,256
Baptist, 11,620,855 19,789,378 41,608,198
Episcopalian, 11,375,610 21,665,698 36,514,549
Congregational, 8,001,995 13,327,511 25,069,698
Reformed, 4,116,280 4,453,820 16,134,470
Lutheran, 2,909,711 5,385,179 14,917,747
Unitarian, 3,280,822 4,338,316 6,282,675
Universalist, 1,718,316 2,856,095 5,692,325
------------- ------------- -------------
$81,649,797 $156,470,846 $330,324,595
The gradation, it will be seen, has been pretty steady, and is
comparatively no more marked in 1870 than it was in 1860, or than it was,
probably, in 1850. In that year, however, the Catholics were led by four
religious bodies, and almost equalled by one. Ten years later they stood
second, and after another ten years second still. Surrounded as they are
by jealous foes, they offer fair game, therefore, to men in search of
political prey. All was right so long as the others reaped an advantage
over Catholics; but the moment there appears any prospect of Catholics
reaping an advantage equally with the rest, the cry is: The country is in
danger, and can only be saved by taxing church property. Who so blind as
not to see through this flimsy pretext?
Not Mr. Andrews certainly, and no words of ours could be more forcible
than his. “Discarding all circumlocution,” he writes, “it is as well to
get down at once to the bottom fact, which is that whatever euphemistic
phrases may be resorted to, a desire to obstruct the growth and
circumscribe the influence of the Roman Catholic Church gives whatever
vitality it may possess to the proposition to tax church property.”
But supposing this change to be made, is it to be imagined for a moment
that the progress of the church will be stopped by it? That is futile.
If, though so few in numbers and at a great disadvantage, the church was
able to raise herself to her present position; if, when the exemptions
were all in favor of other denominations, Catholics were able to make
so great a progress, is it to be supposed that by these changes, and
by placing other denominations on an equality with Catholics, the
advancement of the Catholic Church is to be retarded?
We have been trained in the stern school of poverty. We are accustomed to
sacrifice. Our clergy do not receive high salaries. The personal expenses
of his Eminence the Cardinal-Archbishop are much less than those of
many a clerical family in New York City. Wherever we have arms to work
with, the church of God shall not lack all that is necessary to give it
dignity, even if we have to pay taxes for it besides. In Ireland the
priests and people have shared their crust in the midst of the famine,
and in fear of death, until within a few years. In Germany we are now
about to part with our property, under the wicked injustice of the state,
rather than submit to its interference in the affairs of conscience. Is
any person foolish enough to imagine that a few dollars, more or less,
of taxation is going to dishearten or frighten us? If you want to make
our people more liberal, if you want to see grand Catholic churches and
the cross overtopping roof and spire in every city, just put us on our
mettle. Persecution is our legacy. Martyrdom is our life. The cross on
our brows is no empty symbol. These are our feelings. We have no alarm
whatever.
These proposed innovations are only the entrance of a wedge that, driven
home, will disturb the foundations of our government; will create
religious strife, and blast the hopes of freedom, not only in this
country, but all the world over. They count, however, without their
host who think that the American people are prepared to enter on such
a career; and the politicians who hope to ride into power by awakening
the spirit of fanaticism and religious bigotry among us, if their names
be held in memory at all, will at no remote period be pointed out with
the finger of scorn and contumely as the disturbers of that peace and
harmony which ought always to reign in a just people, and which it is the
true policy of all government and the duty of all citizens to foster and
maintain. We say nothing at the present regarding the unconstitutionality
of these proposed innovations, and of the secret banding together of men
to carry them out.
A NIGHT AT THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE.
FROM THE FRENCH OF SAINT-GENEST.
It is near midnight. I am alone in my cell, awaiting the mysterious guide
who brought me hither, and who will return to call me for the office of
Matins.
I listen to every sound, seeking to understand its language. During the
first hour I still heard steps from time to time in the distance; then
I half opened my door and looked outside. At the end of the cloister a
white figure appeared, carrying a small light in its hand. It approached
at a slow pace, stopped near a pillar, and disappeared under the arches.
Sometimes I have seen other shadows pass along, and have heard a few
low-spoken words, … bells which answered each other; then, little by
little, everything is extinguished and silent.… There is not another
sound, another breath; … but still I listen, and cannot cease to listen.
Is it indeed myself who am in this monastery? Was I, only to-day, yet in
the midst of the living? Can one single day comprise so many things? This
which is just ending has been so full, so strange, that I cannot well
recount all that has happened in it.
And yet it was but this morning that I was at Aix, in the midst of light
and noise and gayety.… The children were gambolling around me! All at
once some one said: “Suppose we go to the Grande Chartreuse!” It was said
just as one would say anything else. We set out, as if for an ordinary
excursion, a party of pleasure. Mme. B---- had provisions in readiness,
which were increased by the additions of other members of the party, and
we start in the midst of lively speeches and merriment.
So long as we proceed along the valley this is all very well. The road
rises and descends, running through the vineyards, skirting the rocks,
while the warm breath of the south gently moves the surrounding verdure.
Then, after piercing the flank of the mountain, it slopes down toward the
plains of Dauphine, discovering a horizon all bathed in light.
It is after passing Saint Laurent, at the foot of the _Desert_, and in
perceiving the entrance of the gorge, that one begins to understand
something more; … it is then that jesting is silenced and gayety grows
grave.
Then, on arriving at the Guiers-Mort, we become altogether dumb. Already
we had ceased to laugh; we now ceased to speak, but regarded with a
sort of stupefaction this road without issue, which seemed to end in
chaos. The mountains rose defiantly before us, overlapping and mingling
with each other, and here and there barring the way with huge masses of
precipitous rock; the gigantic trees seem to rise to the clouds, and
torrents from unknown heights fall as if from heaven, while the rocks
crowd upon, before, around, and seem to say, “No farther shall you
go.” As we come to a turn, it seems as if all progress were indeed at
an end; two immense blocks fallen across each other completely close
the horizon.… We approach them, however, and it opens again, the rocks
forming a sort of Titanic vaulted roof overhead, and falling again in
the form of three bridges, one above the other, the horses continuing to
climb a road which the eye cannot take in.
And whilst one is lost in these abysses, what a perfect dream of splendor
begins to break overhead! Meadows of the most exquisite green seem as if
suspended far above us, silvery rocks jutting out from among their black
firs, gigantic oaks grasping the heights of the precipices, their crowns
of verdure glittering in the wind.… It is a fantastic apparition. One
has visions in one’s childhood of unknown regions, of enchanted forests
guarded by genii, but one never thought to contemplate these marvels in
reality.
Then, all at once, the mountains separate, the torrents disappear, and in
the midst of a gorge rise battlements and spires.… It is the monastery.
There it stands, guarded by these lofty sentinels, in this sombre
amphitheatre, which would be desolation itself if God had not scattered
there all the magical beauties of his creation.
There is not a village, not a cottage, not a wayfarer--nothing; there is
La Chartreuse. No solitude can be compared to that!
On the summit of St. Bernard and of the Simplon monasteries destined
for the relief of travellers present themselves to the passage of the
nations. In the sandy deserts the most isolated convents find themselves
in the road of the caravans; but here this road conducts to nothing--it
is a silent gorge; it is the Valley of Contemplation; it is the greatest
solitude that one can imagine.
And when from those heights one has seen the gradual approach of night;
seen these masses of rock and of verdure enfolded in the vast shadows;
and, at the summons of the monastery bell, has seen the last of the white
robes descend from the mountain, he feels that it is one of those moments
in a life which will never be forgotten. Then, after having stayed awhile
to contemplate this scene, I rose and came to knock at this door, which
has been to so many others as the gate of the tomb.… A Carthusian monk
brought me to my cell, went his way in silence, and since then I have
been left to my reflections.
There are, then, men who in the morning were in their homes, in the midst
of their friends, in life, and stir, and the noise of the outer world.…
They have climbed this mountain, they have sought this _Desert_, have
knocked at this gate; it has closed upon them, … and for ever.
They have, as I, sat down at this table; they have gazed at the walls of
their cell, and have said to themselves: “Behold henceforth my horizon.”
Then they have heard the sound of these bells, the echo of these
litanies, and they have said to themselves: “We shall henceforth hear no
other voice.”
You see, one reads these things in the works of poets, one sees them
represented in the drama; but one must find one’s self actually in a real
cell, and one must sleep there, to conceive anything of the reality of a
monastic life.
To awake here in the morning; to rise and eat, alone, the food which
comes to you through a little wicket, like that of a prisoner; to meet,
when one traverses the cloister, other shadows who salute you in silence;
to go from the church to the cell, from the cell to the church, and to
say to one’s self that it is always and always to be the same!
Always!… All through life; or rather, there is no more life, no more
space, no more time. It is the beginning of eternity. One is on the
threshold of the infinite, and it seems as if all this nature had only
been created to give these men a beginning of eternal repose.
Always alone! The thought crushes one. No more to receive anything from
without; to nourish one’s self with spiritualities alone; to meditate,
contemplate, and pray. To pray always: … to pray for those who never pray
themselves; to pray for those who have shattered your life, and who, may
be, have led you hither; … to pray for those who have despoiled your
monastery and outraged your habit--even for the impious ones who come to
insult you in your very hospitality! And for all this one thing alone
suffices: faith.
A bell has rung; it is the hour of Matins. Some one knocks at my door. I
open, and they conduct me to the little stall reserved for travellers.
At first the obscurity is so great that it is difficult to distinguish
anything. The church is empty, and none of the tapers are lighted. Then
a door opens in the distance, and the monks enter in procession, each
holding a long dark-lantern, of which the slanting gleams dimly lessen
the darkness of the chapel. They repair to their stalls, and the Office
begins.
It consists principally of a monotonous psalmody of an implacable rhythm,
of which one scarcely perceives the first murmurs, and which seems as if
it would never end. I gaze at these tall white figures, these motionless
heads.… What has been the drama of life to each one? What changes,
without and within, have led them there? What have they suffered? And do
they suffer still? What has the rule of their order done for them?--and
still the psalmody goes on.
At times they rise, uttering what seems to be a sort of lamentation; then
they fall prostrate, with their arms stretched out before them; all the
lights disappear; there is nothing but darkness and silence; it seems as
if man himself were extinguished. After which the lights reappear, the
psalmody recommences, and thus it continues.
* * * * *
When the rising sun shone upon the summits of the rocks, I rose from my
pallet, exclaiming: “The light at last! Hail to the light!” I open my
window and look out.… There is no other place like this; such as it was
in the night, such is it in the day. In vain may the sun mount above the
horizon to bring warmth into this gorge--the monastery remains cold and,
as it were, insensible; in vain his rays dart upon the walls, glitter on
the spires, and set the rocks on fire.… There are living men, but one
does not see them, one does not hear them; only a wagon drawn by oxen
crosses the meadow, followed by a monk, and some beggars are approaching
the monastery gate.
Then, without guide or direction, I plunge into the forest in search of
the Chapel of S. Bruno. This forest is of incomparable beauty; neither
Switzerland nor the Pyrenees contain anything like it. Prodigious trees
rise to an immense height, wrapping their gigantic roots about the
rocks. In the midst of the waters which murmur on every side unknown
vegetations luxuriate, sheltering at their feet a world of ferns, tall
grass, and mosses, every dewy feather and spray being hung, as it were,
with precious stones, upon which the sun darts here and there rays of
gold and touches of fire. There is here a wild enchantment which neither
pen nor pencil ever can depict; and in the midst of these marvels rises,
from a rock, the Chapel of S. Bruno. There it was that the visions
appeared to him, and there he caused a spring of water to flow forth;
but to me the most wonderful of all the miracles of his legend was
that of his getting there at all--the fact of his reaching the foot of
this desert, hatchet in hand, cutting down the trees which barred his
entrance, wrestling with wild animals, the masters of this forest, and
having no other pathway than the torrent’s bed; ever mounting upwards,
in spite of the streams, in spite of the rocks, in spite of everything;
never finding himself lost enough, but ever struggling higher and higher
still. The miracle is, too, that of his having fixed himself at last upon
that spot, and to have called companions around him, who constructed each
his little hermitage about his own; that of having, in God’s name, taken
possession of these inaccessible mountains, all of which are surmounted
by a cross, and to have founded an order which spread itself over the
whole Christian world, and which is still existing.
But the hour of departure has arrived. At the moment of quitting this
solitude we again reflect. France and Italy lie spread out beneath our
feet; … that is to say, passions, hatred, strife.… Why should we descend
again? Why resume the burden of ambitions, rivalries, the harness of
social conventionalities? To what purpose is it, since the end at last
must come alike to all?
We look around, we reflect, and then, after having well meditated, we all
descend.
At the foot of the desert we find again huts, then cottages, by and by a
village. With movement and life we find our speech again, and with speech
discussion. Overwhelmed until then by the wild beauty of all around us
and by the majesty of its silence, the sceptics only now recommence the
criticisms which were cut short the evening before: “What services do
these monks render to mankind? To what purpose do they bury themselves
upon those heights, when there is so much to be done below?”
I answer nothing. These are difficult questions. Later we shall know
which has chosen the better part, those who act or those who pray; only
I remember that whilst thirty thousand Israelites were fighting in the
plain, Moses, alone on the mountain, with his arms stretched out towards
heaven, implored the God of armies. When his arms fell through weariness,
the Amalekites prevailed; and when he raised them, Israel was victorious;
and seeing this, he caused his arms to be supported, until the enemies of
Israel were overcome.
While we are debating we cross Saint Laurent, Les Echelles, and the
Valley du Guiers. Here is Chambéry _en fête_, with its flags, its
concourse of _francs-tireurs_, and bands of music; but although we have
returned to outer life, we have brought away with us something of the
solitude we have left, where it seems as if the earth ended.
Believe me, reader, and do not forget my words when you visit these
lands. The sight of La Grande Chartreuse is one of the most powerful
emotions here below. To whatever religion you may belong, if your soul
can be moved by the thought of the life to come, you will preserve an
imperishable remembrance of a night spent in this monastery, and will
feel that you are not altogether the same man that you were when you
entered its walls.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
LES ETATS-UNIS CONTEMPORAINS, OU LES MŒURS, LES INSTITUTIONS ET
LES IDEES DEPUIS LA GUERRE DE LA SECESSION. Par Claudio Jannet.
Ouvrage précédé d’une Lettre de M. Le Play. Paris: E. Plon.
1876.
The author of this volume has read carefully and seriously a large number
of works, by different American, French, and English writers, devoted
to an explanation of the institutions of the United States, and to the
history and social condition of the country. He shows also a remarkable
acquaintance with the magazines and newspapers of the United States, so
far as they bear on the subjects of which he treats. His book, indeed,
must have cost him years of assiduous labor.
M. Jannet gives a just and impartial exposition of the laws and political
principles of our country, as also of its present social condition.
Rarely, if ever, has a foreigner displayed so conscientious a study of
all that goes to make up American civilization. He professes to have
entered upon his study and his work without any preconceived theory--a
profession not unusual with authors, and for the most part, probably,
honestly made. It is one thing, however, to profess, another thing to
adhere to the profession. Were it possible for authors to adhere strictly
to the profession made by M. Jannet, literature and all of which it
treats would certainly not suffer therefrom: But he who imagines he has
attained to so just and fair a position is the least free from illusion.
The position is simply unattainable, and M. Jannet is scarcely to be
blamed if he has not quite reached his ideal.
Two classes of authors have written about the United States. The one
sees almost everything in _couleur de rose_, the other in a sombre hue.
M. Jannet belongs to the latter class. Throughout his volume he fastens
upon every symptom that threatens the existence or the welfare of the
republic. As an enumeration of these symptoms it is exact, and its
perusal would do no harm to our spread-eagle orators.
M. Jannet has evidently aimed at counterbalancing the influence of
writers, French writers particularly, who have exaggerated the good
side of American political society. He seems fearful lest their tone of
thought should have too great a preponderance in France, and influence
its present transition-state too powerfully in the direction of the
United States. Whether or not this was called for is not a question
for us to consider. The book, regarded as an impartial exposition of
the present condition of the United States, resembles the picture of
an artist, the background of which is painted with a Preraphaelite
exactness, while the foreground is left unfinished, and the whole work,
consequently, incomplete. Had the obvious purpose of the book been
proclaimed at the beginning, we should have read it with a more favorable
eye.
In his last chapter, however, M. Jannet holds out some hope for the
future of the American Republic. In our present commercial depression,
in the recent success of the Democratic party, in the number of families
who have preserved the primitive virtues and customs of our forefathers,
and in the progress of Catholicity he sees a ground for this hope,
and concludes his work by saying: “Men are everywhere prosperous or
unfortunate, according as they observe or despise the divine law. All
their free will consists in choosing between these two terms of the
problem of life, and all the efforts of the spirit of innovation only
break against, without ever being able to destroy, the eternal bounds
set by God to the ambitious feebleness of the creature. Therein lies the
lesson that the young republic of the New World sends from beyond the
ocean and across the mirage of its rapid prosperity to the old nations
of Europe, too inclined to believe in the sophisms of the great modern
error, and to mistrust their own traditions.”
M. Jannet’s work is worthy of a more extended notice, which will be given
it at a later date. The book may be ordered directly from the publisher
in France.
THE PUBLIC LIFE OF OUR LORD. II. Preaching of the Beatitudes.
By H. J. Coleridge, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1875. (New
York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This is a new volume in the series which is intended, when complete, to
include the entire life of Jesus Christ. We have already commended the
preceding volume, and can only, at present, renew the expression of our
concurrence in the unanimous verdict of competent judges, which awards a
very high meed of praise to Father Coleridge’s work, so far as it is as
yet given to the public.
It is likely to become extensive when fully completed, since the present
volume is filled up with the author’s introductory remarks on the
missionary life of Our Lord, and the exposition of one portion of the
Sermon on the Mount--to wit, the Beatitudes. It is a work which is,
strictly speaking, _sui generis_ in our language, and indeed in all
modern literature, and one hard to describe in such a way as to give
an accurate notion of its quality and scope to a person who has not
read some portion of its contents. The author has drawn from the most
various and from the purest sources, and has himself meditated in a very
attentive and minute manner upon the rich materials furnished him by the
sacred lore of his studies. He proceeds leisurely, quietly, carefully,
like the patient illuminator of a manuscript text, filling his pages with
large and small figures, all elaborately finished. The present volume
gives us a sketch of Galilee, the scene of the preaching and miracles of
our divine Redeemer during his first year of public ministry, which makes
at once the idea of that ministry, of its extraordinary laboriousness,
its extent, and the multitude of wonderful works comprehended within its
brief period, ten times more vivid than it can be made by a mere perusal
of the Gospel narrative. In this respect it is especially interesting and
instructive for those who are themselves engaged in missionary labors. We
have a picture placed before our minds of the real nature of Our Lord’s
public life and ministry, and grouped around it are other pictures, as
illustrations, from the lives of the great missionary saints. When the
author approaches to his principal theme in this volume--the Sermon on
the Mount--he makes the whole scene and all its circumstances appear
before us like a fine dioramic view. He is not, however, of that
meretricious school to which Renan and Beecher have given a false and
momentary _éclat_, as unworthy of the divine subject as the homage of
another class of witnesses on whom Our Lord frequently imposed silence.
The poetic, literary, and picturesque charms of Father Coleridge’s style
are subservient to his theological, doctrinal, and moral exposition of
sacred truths. It is the pure doctrine of the Scriptures, and of the
fathers, doctors, and saints of the church, which we are invited and
allured to drink from the ornamented chalice.
THE HOLY WAYS OF THE CROSS; OR, A SHORT TREATISE ON THE VARIOUS
TRIALS AND AFFLICTIONS, INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR, TO WHICH THE
SPIRITUAL LIFE IS SUBJECT, AND THE MEANS OF MAKING A GOOD USE
THEREOF. Translated from the French of Henri-Marie Boudon,
Archdeacon of Evreux. By Edward Healy Thompson, M.A. London:
Burns, Oates & Co. 1875. (New York: Sold by The Catholic
Publication Society.)
Whoever, after reading the title of this book, thinks that a treatise of
this kind would be useful and helpful, and wishes to find such a book
as may really do the service promised by the title, will probably be
satisfied with the book itself. It is standard and approved, and has been
well translated by Mr. Thompson, whose preface contains some excellent
and timely remarks of his own.
THE STORY OF S. PETER. By W. D. S. London: Burns & Oates. 1875.
(New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
This little book purports to be a simple sketch of the life of the
Prince of the Apostles. It will serve to recall the principal events in
his life, and therefore will possess a certain amount of interest for
Catholic readers. The binding, type, and paper are neat and elegant.
The object of the book is evidently pious, and therefore we shrink from
criticising it too minutely. The style also is pleasing and readable.
It is to be regretted, however, that the author did not take a little
more pains with his task. It is a good thing to have plenty of books
on Catholic subjects; and those who are gifted with power, and who can
command the leisure, are, to a certain extent, bound to write. But they
are also bound to study consistency and order, and, in sending forth
their productions, to show a proper respect for those who are expected to
buy them. Good-will does not excuse slovenliness, and we heartily wish
that “W. D. S.” had shown a deeper sense of this truth. The fact that a
book is small and easily read does not free the writer from a thorough
analysis of his subject and employment of all sources of information
regarding it. The present work is serviceable as an introduction to a
real treatise on the position and office of S. Peter. It is nothing more;
and we are sorry that it is not.
LEHRBUCH DES KATHOLISCHEN UND PROTESTANTISCHEN KIRCHENRECHTS.
Von Dr. Friedrich H. Vering. Herder, Freiburg. 1875.
A number of the most learned Catholic theologians of Germany have
combined together to prepare a complete theological library. The present
volume on canon law makes the fifth thus far issued. This library is one
which will be very valuable to German priests or those who read German.
The names of Hergenröther, Scheeben, and other writers of similar rank
who are contributors sufficiently guarantee its excellence.
ACTA ET DECRETA CONCILII VATICANI. Collectio Lacensis, tom.
iii. Herder, Freiburg. 1875.
These and other publications of the Herder publishing house are imported
by the enterprising firm of the Benzigers. The first is a convenient
and carefully edited text of the acts of the Vatican Council, to which
is appended a list of all the episcopal sees and prelatures called
_nullius_ in the entire Catholic Church. The second is one portion of the
magnificent collection of modern councils published at Maria-Laach, and
contains the acts of British and North American councils held during the
past century, or, to speak more precisely, from 1789 to 1869.
CALDERON’S GROESSTE DRAMEN RELIGIOESEN INHALTS. Uebersetzt von
Dr. F. Lorinser. 3d vol. Herder, Freiburg. 1875.
We cannot speak from personal knowledge of the merit of this translation.
Readers of German literature who cannot read Calderon in the original
will no doubt be pleased to find some of his great dramas in a German
dress, and be sufficiently interested in them to ascertain for themselves
how far the great poet has been successfully reproduced.
VOLKSTHUEMLICHES AUS SCHWABEN. Von Dr. Anton Birlinger. Herder,
Freiburg. 1861.
We have here in two volumes a miscellaneous collection of every kind of
_folk-lore_, in prose and verse, mostly very short pieces which must be
very amusing for children and others who like to entertain themselves
with curious odds and ends of this sort.
THE SACRIFICE OF THE EUCHARIST, AND OTHER DOCTRINES OF THE
CATHOLIC CHURCH EXPLAINED AND VINDICATED. By the Rev. Charles
B. Garside. London: Burns & Oates. 1875. (New York: Sold by The
Catholic Publication Society.)
This is a very thoughtful and learned treatise on the Sacrifice of the
Mass, and, though not directly controversial, it is a very lucid and
satisfactory vindication of the Catholic doctrine on the Holy Eucharist
considered as a sacrifice.
The volume contains also essays on “Definitions of the Catholic faith,
Existence of the church in relation to Scripture, Tradition as a vehicle
of Christian doctrine, The Atonement and Purgatory,” and other subjects,
all of them well written, and some, such as the one on “Definitions of
the Catholic Faith,” occupied with discussion of questions which are
frequently talked of at the present, and upon which it is important to
have clear and accurate notions.
THE PERSECUTIONS OF ANNAM: A History of Christianity in Cochin
China and Tonking. By J. R. Shortland, M.A. London: Burns
& Oates. 1875. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication
Society.)
We read an account a few days since of four hundred Catholic priests who
four years ago were transported from Poland to Siberia by the Russian
government; three hundred have died, and the others can survive but a
little while. It was only a paragraph in a newspaper. The martyrs die as
of old, and we scarcely hear of their sufferings. The missionary work
of the church, too, is almost forgotten by her children who are living
at ease and in comfort; and yet it is carried on in all quarters of the
globe. Our brothers, if we be worthy to call them by this name, are
toiling, suffering, dying for Christ and the souls of men in far-off
countries of which we seem not to care even to know anything. Here is a
book, most interesting and consoling, full of edifying facts and heroic
examples, written clearly and simply. It is a history of Christianity
in Cochin China and Tonking; and as these two countries form the Empire
of Annam, and the history of the church is always one of persecution,
of triumph through suffering, the book is entitled _The Persecutions of
Annam_. For centuries Europeans have been excluded from this country,
into the interior of which the only strangers who have penetrated have
been Catholic missionaries, and they have gone at the risk of their
lives. For two hundred and fifty years the apostles of the church
have been laboring in Annam, and whoever will read this book will be
struck with wonder at the work they have done and the sufferings they
have endured. Never anywhere have there been more barbarous or cruel
persecutions, and never have they been borne with more heroic fortitude
and simple trust in God.
And then what a wealth of instruction in the lives of these Annamite
converts! From 1615 down to our own day thousands and hundreds of
thousands have received the faith, and, rather than forfeit it, hundreds
and thousands have endured every torment, death itself. Their warm piety,
their intelligent faith, their dauntless courage, put us to shame.
The last persecution broke out in 1858, and raged until the Christians
were relieved by the arms of France, in consequence of which a treaty
of peace was signed in June, 1862, which was soon followed by a decree
granting religious worship; and we may hope that the soil which has drunk
the blood of so many martyrs will yet become the vineyard of Christ.
But we must refer our readers to the book itself, and close this brief
notice with the wish that some one of our Catholic houses in this country
may republish this most interesting chapter of Catholic history.
THE AMERICAN STATE AND AMERICAN STATESMEN. By William Giles
Dix. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 171. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. 1876.
It is refreshing in these days to meet with a non-Catholic writer like
Mr. Dix, who takes his stand on Christianity and the law of Christ as
the foundation of all right law and government. There is a class, and
a large class, of patriots among us who seem, unconsciously indeed, to
resent the idea that Almighty God had anything at all to do with the
growth and development of this country. To this class of men Mr. Dix’s
book will be a sharp reminder that there is a God above us who rules
all things, and that religion and governments did actually exist in the
world at large--and in the New World, for the matter of that--before
the _Mayflower_ touched these shores. The book deals with just what its
title indicates: the American state and American statesmen. Among the
statesmen dealt with are Abraham Lincoln, Charles Sumner, and several of
the historic names that have lent a lustre to Congress. But the larger
and graver portion of the book deals with the constitution of the States
in themselves and their relation to the States as a whole or nation. Mr.
Dix is a strong and earnest advocate for his views; but his views in the
present matter are almost diametrically opposed to the general feeling of
Americans. “Are the United States a nation?” he boldly asks in the final
chapter of the book, and his answer is “yes” and “no.” In a word, he is
strongly in favor of the centralization of sovereignty as opposed to the
local independence of States. As long as federalism exists, says Mr. Dix,
practically, so long is the nation exposed to disorder and a renewal of
the civil war.
So important a question, it is needless to remark, is scarcely to be
settled in a book-notice; is, indeed, beyond books altogether. It is
a growth. The country and government alike are a growth, and a growth
that will not be forced. They are just entering on the hundredth year
of a life that has been seriously threatened, and, notwithstanding the
theatrical thunder which is being heard just now of politicians resolved
to make “a hit,” we cannot but look to the development of this growth
with hope and confidence. At the same time, it is the part of all who
are concerned to guard that growth well, to see that no weeds spring
up around it, to let in light and air and freedom, and to keep off all
noxious influences that would threaten the life of the parent stem. In
the desire to do this, such chapters as “Christianity the Inspirer of
Nations,” “Materialism the Curse of America,” and “America a Christian
Power,” which seem to us the strongest chapters in Mr. Dix’s book, will
be found full of eloquent suggestion and sound, even solemn, advice.
The book, as a whole, will be found a very interesting one. The writer
is a bold man, who certainly has the courage of his convictions, which
he never hesitates to express openly. The book overruns with apt
illustration and an extraordinary eloquence. Indeed, there is a fault
in parts of too great eloquence, compensated for over and over again by
passages full of terseness, purity, and strength.
PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY CONSTABLE AND GILLIES. (Bric-à-Brac
Series.) Edited by Richard Henry Stoddard. New York: Scribner,
Armstrong & Co. 1876.
This volume completes the first Bric-à-Brac Series. The publishers
announce an extensive sale--proof only of its being suited to certain
literary tastes. We have not been able to pronounce a very favorable
opinion upon the merits of the series. In turning over the leaves of a
college sheet the other day, we came upon an extract from the letter of
a young lady at one of our fashionable seminaries, in which, counselling
her sisters to high resolves and noble aims, she says: “Instead of
getting a new hat this term, let us buy a Bric-à-Brac.” We think this
is good evidence of the value of these volumes as literary works. They
are admirably suited for boarding-school misses. But what the authors
and scholars who are gossiped about would say at being brought down to
this level is another question. On the whole, we would advise this young
lady to buy a new hat instead. The hat will serve a useful if not a very
exalted purpose in covering her head; the “Bric-à-Brac” will fill it with
frivolous and untrustworthy chit-chat.
This volume treats, under distinct heads, of forty-six persons--including
a majority of the poets, novelists, historians, linguistic scholars, and
essayists of Scotland at the beginning of this century, with a sprinkling
of English and German _savants_, including Goethe--in a little over
three hundred small duodecimo pages. That is to say, it gives an average
of seven pages to each author. These seven pages are devoted almost
exclusively in each instance to trivial personal anecdotes. From this
simple inventory, therefore, it will be easy to form an accurate notion
of what the young lady gains mentally as an equivalent for the loss of
her new hat.
Considerable space is given, however, to one or two worthies. Of these,
William Godwin, the revolutionary propagandist, holds the first place,
and with him incidentally his first wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, the author
of the _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_. This precious pair are
handled with great tenderness and unction.
The rest of the volume is made up chiefly of reminiscences of the small
literary stars who twinkled round Sir Walter Scott in Edinburgh at the
beginning of the century, and stole something from the reflection of his
brightness, but who are now for the most part forgotten.
IN DOORS AND OUT; OR, VIEWS FROM THE CHIMNEY CORNER. By Oliver
Optic. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1876.
Excellent stories, all of which might have been drawn from actual life,
are to be found in this volume. Like all of Oliver Optic’s books, it may
be safely placed in the hands of young people. Some of the sketches, such
as “Good-for-Nothings,” might be read with as much profit as amusement by
grown-up persons, especially those who are continually complaining about
servant-girls.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXII., No. 132.--MARCH, 1876.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev. I. T.
HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
A SEQUEL OF THE GLADSTONE CONTROVERSY.
II
One of the most mischievous prejudices of our day is the popular theory
that the cure for all evils is to be sought in the intellectual education
of the masses. Those nations, we are told by every declaimer, in which
the education of the people is most universal, are the most moral, the
richest, the strongest, the freest, and their prosperity rests upon the
most solid and lasting foundation. Make ignorance a crime, teach all to
read and write, and war will smooth its rugged front, armies will be
disbanded, crime will disappear, and mankind will have found the secret
of uninterrupted progress, the final outcome of which will surpass even
our fondest dreams.
This fallacy, which has not even the merit of being plausible, is,
of course, made to do service in M. de Laveleye’s pamphlet on the
comparative bearing of Protestantism and Catholicism on the prosperity of
nations.
“It is now universally admitted,” he informs us (p. 22), “that the
diffusion of enlightenment is the first condition of progress.… The
general spread of education is also indispensable to the exercise of
constitutional liberty.… In short, education is the basis of national
liberty and prosperity.”
He then goes on to declare that in this matter of popular education
Protestant countries are far in advance of those that are Catholic;
that this is necessarily so, since “the Reformed religion rests on a
book--the Bible; the Protestant, therefore, must know how to read.
Catholic worship, on the contrary, rests upon sacraments and certain
practices--such as confession, Masses, sermons--which do not necessarily
involve reading. It is, therefore, unnecessary to know how to read;
indeed, it is dangerous, for it inevitably shakes the principle of
passive obedience on which the whole Catholic edifice reposes: reading is
the road that leads to heresy.”
We will first consider the theory, and then take up the facts.
“The diffusion of enlightenment is the first condition of progress.
Education is indispensable to the exercise of constitutional liberty.
Education is the basis of national liberty and prosperity.”
Enlightenment is, of course, of the mind, and means the development, more
or less perfect, of the intellectual faculties; and education, since it
is here considered as synonymous with enlightenment, must be taken in
this narrow sense.
Progress is material, moral, intellectual, social, political, artistic,
religious, scientific, literary, and indefinitely manifold. Now, it is
assumed that the diffusion of enlightenment is not merely promotive, but
that it is an essential condition of progress in its widest and fullest
meaning. This is the new faith--the goddess of culture, holding the torch
of science and leading mankind into the palace of pleasure, the only true
heaven.
By conduct, we have already said, both individuals and nations are saved
or perish; and we spoke of the civilized. Barbarous states are destroyed
by catastrophes--they die a violent death; but the civilized are wasted
by internal maladies--_suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit_. They grow and
they decay, they progress and they decline. At first poverty, virtue,
industry, faith, hopefulness, strong characters and heroic natures; at
last wealth, corruption, indolence, unbelief, despair, children too weak
even to admire the strength of their fathers, too base to believe that
they were noble. Public spirit dies out; patriotism is in the mouths
of politicians, but, like the augurs of Rome, they cannot speak the
word and look one another in the face. The country is to each one what
he can make out of it, and the bond of union is the desire of each
citizen to secure his own interests. The bondholders love their country,
and the _sans-culottes_ are disloyal; class rises against class, civil
discord unsettles everything, revolution succeeds revolution, and when
the barbarian comes he holds an inquest over the corpse. It generally
happens, too, that those civilizations which spring up quickest and
promise most fair are fated to die earliest; as precocious children
disappoint fond mothers. If the teaching of history is a trustworthy
guide, we are certainly safe in affirming that civilized states and
empires perish, not from lack of knowledge, but of virtue; not because
the people are ignorant, but because they are corrupt.
The assumption, however, is that men become immoral because they are
ignorant; that if they were enlightened, they would be virtuous.
“The superstition,” says Herbert Spencer (_Study of Sociology_, p. 121),
“that good behavior is to be forthwith produced by lessons learned out
of books, which was long ago statistically disproved, would, but for
preconceptions, be utterly dissipated by observing to what a slight
extent knowledge affects conduct; by observing that the dishonesty
implied in the adulterations of tradesmen and manufacturers, in
fraudulent bankruptcies, in bubble-companies, in ‘cooking’ of railway
accounts and financial prospectuses, differs only in form, and not in
amount, from the dishonesty of the uneducated; by observing how amazingly
little the teachings given to medical students affect their lives, and
how even the most experienced medical men have their prudence scarcely at
all increased by their information.”
It is not knowledge, but character, that is important; and character
is formed more by faith, by hope, by love, admiration, enthusiasm,
reverence, than by any patchwork of alphabetical and arithmetical
symbols. The young know but little; but they believe firmly, they hope
nobly, and love generously; and it is while knowledge is feeble and these
spontaneous acts of the soul are strong that character is moulded. The
curse of our age is that men will believe that, in education, to spell,
to read, to write, is what signifies, and they cast aside the eternal
faith, the infinite hope, the divine love, that more than all else make
us men.
“The true test of civilization,” says Emerson, “is not the census, nor
the size of cities, nor the crops--no, but the kind of man the country
turns out.” Is there some mystic virtue in printed words that to be
able to read them should make us men? And even in the most enlightened
countries what do the masses of men know? Next to nothing; and their
reading, for the most part, stupefies them. The newspaper, with its
murders, suicides, hangings, startling disclosures, defalcations,
embezzlements, burglaries, forgeries, adulteries, advertisements of
nostrums, quack medicines, and secrets of working death in the very
source of life, with all manner of hasty generalizations, crude theories,
and half-truths jumbled into intellectual _pot-pourris_; the circulating
library, with its stories, tales, romances of love, despair, death, of
harrowing accidents, of hair-breadth escapes, of successful crime, and
all the commonplaces of wild, reckless, and unnatural life--these are the
sources of their knowledge. Or, if they are ambitious, they read “How to
get on in the world,” “The art of making money,” “The secret of growing
rich,” “The road to wealth,” “Successful men,” “The millionaires of
America,” and the Mammon-worship, and the superstition of matter, and the
idolatry of success become their religion; their souls die within them,
and what wretched slaves they grow to be!
In the newspaper and circulating library God and man, heaven and
earth--all things--are discussed, flippantly, in snatches, generally;
all possible conflicting and contradictory views are taken; and these
ignorant masses, who, in the common schools, have been through the Fourth
Reader, and who know nothing, not even their own ignorance, are confused.
They doubt, they lose faith, and are enlightened by the discovery that
God, the soul, truth, justice, honor, are only nominal--they do not
concern positivists. Can anything be more pitiful than the state of these
poor wretches?--neither knowing nor believing; without knowledge, yet
having neither faith nor love. God pity them that they are communists,
internationalists, _solidaires_; for what else could they be? No
enthusiasm is possible for them but that of destruction.
Religion is the chief element in civilization, and consequently in
progress. For the masses of men, even though the whole energy of mankind
should spend itself upon some or any possible common-school system,
the eternal principles which mould character, support manhood, and
consecrate humanity will always remain of faith, and can never be held
scientifically. If it were possible that science should prove religion
false, it would none the less remain true, or there would be no truth.
What children know when they leave school is mechanical, external to
their minds, fitted on them like clothes on the body; and it is soon
worn threadbare, and hangs in shreds and patches. Take the first boy
whom you meet, fourteen or fifteen years old, fresh from the common
school, and his ignorance of all real knowledge will surprise you. What
he knows is little and of small value; what is of moment is whether he
believes firmly, hopes strongly, and loves truly. Not the diffusion of
enlightenment do we want so much, but the diffusion of character, of
honest faith, and manly courage.
Man is more than his knowledge. Simple faith is better than reading and
writing. And yet the educational quacks treat the child as though he were
mere mind, and his sole business to use it, and chiefly for low ends,
shrewdly and sharply, with a view to profit; as though life were a thing
of barter, and wisdom the art of making the most of it.
Poor child! who wouldst live by admiration, hope, and love, how they
dwarf thy being, stunt thy growth, and flatten all thy soaring thoughts
with their dull commonplaces--thrift, honesty is the best policy, time is
money, knowledge is wealth, and all the vocabulary of a shop-keeping and
trading philosophy. Poor child! who wouldst look out into the universe
as God’s great temple, and behold in all its glories the effulgence of
heaven; to whom morning, noon, and night, and change of season, golden
flood of day and star-lit gloom, all speak of some diviner life, how they
stun thy poetic soul, full of high dreams and noble purposes, with their
cold teaching that man lives on bread alone--put money in thy purse! And
when thou wouldst look back with awe and reverence to the sacred ages
past, to the heroes, sages, saints of the olden times, they come with
their gabble and tell thee there were no railroads and common schools in
those days.
Is it strange that this education should hurt the nation’s highest
interests by driving in crowds, like cattle to the shambles, our youths
from God and nature and tilling of the soil to town and city, or, worse,
into professions to which only their conceit or distaste for hard labor
calls them? What place for morality is there in this Poor Richard’s
Catechism--education of thrift and best policy? We grow in likeness to
what we love, not to what we know. With low aims and selfish loves only
narrow and imperfect characters are compatible.
Science, when cherished for itself--which it seldom is and in very
exceptional cases--refines and purifies its lovers, and chastens the
force of passion; though even here we must admit that the wisest of
mankind may be the meanest, morally the most unworthy. But for the great
mass of men, even of those who are called educated, the possession of
such knowledge as they have or can have has no necessary relation with
higher moral life. Their learning may refine, smooth over, or conceal
their sin; it will not destroy it. The furred gown and intertissued robe
hide the faults that peep through beggars’ rags, but they are there all
the same. There may be a substitution of pride for sensuality, or a
skilful blending or alternation of the finer with the coarser. Vice may
lose its grossness, but not its evil. And herein we detect the wretched
sophistry of criminal statistics, which deal, imperfectly and roughly
enough, with what is open, shocking, and repulsive. The hidden sins
that “like pitted speck in garnered fruit,” slowly eating to the core
of a people’s life, moulder all; the sapping of faith, the weakening of
character, the disbelief in goodness; the luxury, the indulgence, the
heartlessness and narrowness of the rich; the cunning devices through
which “the spirit of murder” works in the very means of life,
“While rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen”
--cannot be appreciated by the gross tests of numbers and averages. The
poor, by statistics as by the world, are handled without gloves. In the
large cities of civilized countries, both in ancient and in modern times,
we have unmistakable proof of what knowledge can do to form character
and produce even the social virtues. These populations have had the
advantage of the best schools in the most favorable circumstances, and
yet in character and morality they are far beneath the less educated
peasantry. Sensual indulgence, contempt of authority, hatred and jealousy
of those above them, make these the dangerous classes, eager for
socialistic reforms, radical upheavals of the whole existing order; and
were it not for the more religious tillers of the soil, chaos and misrule
would already prevail. In Greece and Rome it was in the cities that
civilization first perished, as it was there it began--began with men
who had great faith and strong character, but little knowledge; perished
among men who were learned and refined, but who in indulgence and debauch
had lost all strength and honesty of purpose.
In the last report of the Commissioner of Education some interesting
facts, bearing on the relation of ignorance to crime, are taken from the
Forty-fifth Annual Report of the inspector of the State penitentiary for
the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
“It is doubted if in any State, or indeed in any country,” says the
commissioner, “forty-four volumes containing the annual statistical
tables relating to the populations of a penal institution, covering
nearly half a century, can, on examination, be regarded as more complete.”
The number of prisoners received into the institution from 1850 to 1860
was 1,605, of whom 15 per cent. were illiterate, 15 per cent. were able
to read, and 70 per cent., or more than two-thirds, knew how to read
and write; from 1860 to 1870, 2,383 prisoners were received into the
penitentiary, and of these 17 per cent. were illiterate, 12 per cent.
could read, and about 71 per cent. could read and write.
Of the 627 convicts who were in the penitentiary during the year 1867, 62
per cent., or five-eighths of the whole number, had attended the public
schools of the State, 25 per cent., or two-eighths, had gone to private
institutions, and 12 per cent., or one-eighth, had never gone to school.
But, as we have said, statistics deal with crime, and chiefly with the
more open and discoverable sort, not with morality; whereas nations are
destroyed not so much by crime as by immorality.
The thief is caught and sent to the penitentiary; but the trader
who adulterates or gives short measure, the banker who puts forth
a false or exaggerated statement, the merchant who fails with full
hands, the stock-gambler who robs thousands, Crédit-Mobilier men and
“ring” men generally who plunder scientifically, Congressmen who take
money for helping to swindle the government, getters-up of “bubble
companies”--salted diamond-fields and Emma Mines--compared with whom
pickpockets and burglars are respectable gentlemen--these know not of
penitentiaries; prisons were not built for such as they. The poor man
abandons his wife, without divorce marries another, and is very properly
sent to State prison. His rich and educated fellow-citizen gets a
divorce, or is a free-lover, or keeps a harem, and for him laws were not
made. Even that respectable old dame Society only gently shakes her head.
We must not expect too much of gentlemen, you know. The ignorant girl
falls, commits infanticide, and is incarcerated or hanged--heaven forbid
that we should attempt to tell what she would have done had she been
educated!--at any rate, she would not have gone to prison, though her
guilt would not have been less.
Has the very great diffusion of enlightenment among our people during
the hundred years that we have been an independent nation made them more
moral and more worthy?
“The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities,
nor the crops--no, but the kind of man the country turns out.”
The Yankee is smarter than the Puritan--is he as true a man? Is the
inventor of a sewing-machine or a patent bedstead as worthy as he who
believes in God and in liberty against the whole earth with all his
heart and soul, even though the heart be hard and the soul narrow? What
compensation is there in all our philanthropies, transcendentalisms,
sentimentalities, patent remedies for social evils, for the loss of the
strong convictions, reverent belief, and simple dignity of character
that made our fathers men? Do we believe in the goodness and honesty
of men as they did, or is it possible that we should? What can come of
beliefs in oversouls, whims, tendencies, abstractions, developments? If
we were shadows in a shadow-land, this might do.
Look at a famous trial where the very aroma and fine essence of our
civilization was gathered: What bright minds, keen intellects! Poetry,
eloquence, romance; the culture, the knowledge, the scientific theories,
of the age--all are there. And yet, when the veil is lifted, we simply
turn away heart sick and nauseated. Not a hundred statistical prison
reports would reveal the festering corruption and deep depravity, the
coarse vulgarity and utter heartlessness that is there, whatever the
truth may be, if in such surroundings it can be found at all.
In Laing’s _Notes of a Traveller_ (p. 221) we find a most striking
example of almost incredible corruption united with great intellectual
culture. “In this way,” he says, “we must account for the singular fact
that the only positively immoral religious sect of the present times in
the Christian world arose and has spread itself in the most educated
part of the most educated country in Europe--in and about Königsberg,
the capital of the province of Old Prussia. The Muckers are a sect
who combine lewdness with religion. The conventicles of this sect are
frequented by men and women in a state of nudity; and to excite the
animal passion, but to restrain its indulgence, is said to constitute
their religious exercise. Many of the highest nobility of the province,
and two of the established clergy of the city, besides citizens,
artificers, and ladies, old and young, belong to this sect; and two
young ladies are stated to have died from the consequences of excessive
libidinous excitement. It is no secret association of profligacy
shunning the light. It is a sect--according to the declarations of Von
Tippelskirch and of several persons of consideration in Königsberg who
had been followers of it themselves--existing very extensively under the
leadership of the established ministers of the Gospel, Ebel and Diestel,
of a Count von Kaniz, of a Lady von S----, and of other noble persons.…
The system and theory of this dreadful combination of vice with religion
are, of course, very properly suppressed.… The sect itself appears, by
Dr. Bretscheider’s account of it, to have been so generally diffused that
he says ‘it cannot be believed that the public functionaries were in
ignorance of its existence; but they were afraid to do their duty from
the influence of the many principal people who were involved in it.’”
But we are not the advocates of ignorance. We will praise with any man
the true worth and inestimable value of education. Even mere mental
training is, to our thinking, of rare price. Water is good, but without
bread it will not sustain life. Wine warms and gladdens the heart of man;
but if used without care, it maddens and drives to destruction. We are
crying out against the folly of the age which would make the school-room
its church, education its sacrament, and culture its religion. It is the
road to ruin. Culture is for the few; and what a trumpery patchwork of
frippery and finery and paste diamonds it must ever remain for the most
of these! For the millions it means the pagan debauch, the bacchanal
orgy, and mere animalism.
“The characters,” wrote Goethe--who was pagan of the pagans and
“decidirter Nicht-Christ”--“which we can truly respect have become
rarer. We can sincerely esteem only that which is not self-seeking.… I
must confess to have found through my whole life unselfish characters
of the kind of which I speak only there where I found a firmly-grounded
religious life; a creed, which had an unchangeable basis, resting upon
itself--not dependent upon the time, its spirit, or its science.”
This foundation of a positive religious faith is as indispensable to
national as to individual character, and without it the diffusion of
enlightenment cannot create a great or lasting civilization. Religion
ought to constitute the very essence of all primary education. It alone
can touch the heart, raise the mind, and evoke from their brutish apathy
the elements of humanity, especially the reason; and it is therefore the
one indispensable element in any right system of national education.
A population unable to read or write, but with a religious faith and
discipline, has before now constituted, and may again constitute, a great
nation; but a people without religious earnestness has no solid political
character. Religion is the widest and deepest of all the elements of
civilization; it reaches those whom nothing else can touch; but for the
masses of men there can be no religion without the authoritative teaching
of a church.
And now let us return to M. de Laveleye. “The general spread of
education,” he says (p. 23), “is indispensable to the exercise of
constitutional liberty.… Education is the basis of national liberty and
prosperity.”
In view of the facts that constitutional liberty has existed, and for
centuries, in states in which there was no “general spread of education,”
and that “the diffusion of enlightenment” is found in our own day to
co-exist with the most hateful despotisms, we might pass on, without
stopping to examine more closely these loose and popular phrases; but
since the fallacies which they contain form a part of the culture-creed
of modern paganism, and are accepted as indisputable truths by the
multitude, they have a claim upon our attention which their assertion by
Mr. Gladstone’s friend could not give them.
There is no necessary connection between popular education and civil
liberty, as there is none between the enlightenment and the morality of
a people. This is a subject full of import--one which, in this age and
country, ought to be discussed with perfect freedom and courage. Courage
indeed is needed precisely here; for to deny that there is a God, to
treat Christ as a myth or a common man, to declaim against religion as
superstition, to make the Bible a butt for witticisms and fine points,
to deny future life and the soul’s immortality, to denounce marriage, to
preach communism, and to ridicule whatever things mankind have hitherto
held sacred--this is not only tolerable, it is praiseworthy and runs
with the free thought of an enlightened and inquiring age. But to raise
a doubt as to the supreme and paramount value of intellectual training;
of its sovereign efficacy in the cure of human ills; of its inseparable
alliance with freedom, with progress, with man’s best interests, is
pernicious heresy, and ought not to be borne with patiently. In our
civilization, through the action of majorities, there is special
difficulty in such discussions, since with us nothing is true except what
is popular. Majorities rule, and are therefore right. With rare eloquence
we denounce tyrant kings and turn to lick the hands of the tyrant people.
Whoever questions the wisdom of the American people is not to be argued
with--he is to be pitied; and therefore both press and pulpit, though
they flaunt the banner of freedom, are the servants of the tyrant. To
have no principles, but to write and speak what will please the most and
offend the fewest--this is the philosophy of free speech. We therefore
have no independent, and consequently no great, thinkers. It is dangerous
not to think with majorities and parties; for those who attempt to break
their bonds generally succeed, like Emerson, only in becoming whimsical,
weak, and inconclusive. It is not surprising, then, that the Catholics,
because they do not accept as true or ultimate what is supposed to be the
final thought and definite will of American majorities on the subject of
education, should be denounced, threatened, and made a Trojan Horse of to
carry political adventurers into the White House.
Nevertheless, the observant are losing confidence in the theory, so
full of inspiration to demagogues and declaimers, that superstition
and despotism must be founded on ignorance. In Prussia at this moment
universal education co-exists with despotism. Where tyrannical
governments take control of education they easily make it their ally.
Let us hear what Laing says of the practical results of the Prussian
system of education, which it is so much the fashion to praise.
“If the ultimate object,” he says, “of all education and
knowledge be to raise man to the feeling of his own moral
worth, to a sense of his responsibility to his Creator and to
his conscience for every act, to the dignity of a reflecting,
self-guiding, virtuous, religious member of society, then
the Prussian educational system is a failure. It is only a
training from childhood in the conventional discipline and
submission of mind which the state exacts from its subjects.
It is not a training or education which has raised, but
which has lowered, the human character.… The social value or
importance of the Prussian arrangements for diffusing national
scholastic education has been evidently overrated; for now that
the whole system has been in the fullest operation in society
upon a whole generation, we see morals and religion in a more
unsatisfactory state in this very country than in almost any
other in the north of Europe; we see nowhere a people in a more
abject political and civil condition, or with less free agency
in their social economy. A national education which gives a
nation neither religion, nor morality, nor civil liberty,
nor political liberty is an education not worth having.… If
to read, write, cipher, and sing be education, the Prussian
subject is an educated man. If to reason, judge, and act as an
independent free agent, in the religious, moral, and social
relations of man to his Creator and to his fellow-men, be the
exercise of the mental powers which alone deserves the name
of education, then is the Prussian subject a mere drum boy
in education, in the cultivation and use of all that regards
the moral and intellectual endowments of man, compared to one
of the unlettered population of a free country. The dormant
state of the public mind on all affairs of public interest,
the acquiescence in a total want of political influence or
existence, the intellectual dependence upon the government
or its functionary in all the affairs of the community, the
abject submission to the want of freedom or free agency in
thoughts, words, or acts, the religious thraldom of the people
to forms which they despise, the want of influence of religious
and social principle in society, justify the conclusion that
the moral, religious, and social condition of the people was
never looked at or estimated by those writers who were so
enthusiastic in their praises of the national education of
Prussia.”
In spite of the continued progress of education, there is even less
liberty, religious, civil, and political, in Prussia to-day than when
these words were written, thirty years ago.
Nothing more dazzles the eyes of men than great military success; and
this, together with the habit which belongs to our race of applauding
whoever wins, has produced, especially in England and the United States,
where Bismarck is looked upon, ignorantly enough, as the champion of
Protestantism, a kind of blind admiration and awe for whatever is
Prussian. “Protestant Prussia,” boasts M. de Laveleye, “has defeated
two empires, each containing twice her own population, the one in seven
weeks, the other in seven months”; and in the new edition of Appleton’s
_Encyclopædia_ we are informed that these victories are attributed to
the superior education of her people. As well might the tyranny of the
government and the notorious unchastity and dishonesty of the Prussians
be ascribed to their superior education. Not to the general intelligence
of the people, but to the fact that the whole country has been turned
into a military camp, and that to the one purpose of war all interests
have been made subservient, must we seek for an explanation of the
victories of Sadowa and Sedan.
Who would pretend that the Spartans were in war superior to the
Athenians because they had a more perfect system of education and
were more intelligent or had a truer religion? Or who would think of
accounting in this way for the marvellous exploits of Attila with his
Huns, of Zingis Khan with his Moguls, of Tamerlane with his Tartars, of
Mahmood, Togrul-Beg, and Malek-Shah with their Turkish hordes?
In fact, it may be said, speaking largely and in general, that the
history of war is that of the triumph of strong and ignorant races over
those which have become cultivated, refined, and corrupt. The Romans
learned from their conquered slaves letters and the vices of a more
polished paganism. Barbarism is ever impending over the civilized world.
The wild and rugged north is ever rushing down upon the soft and cultured
south: the Scythian upon the Mede, the Persian, and the Egyptian; the
Macedonian upon Greece, and then upon Asia and Africa; the Roman upon
Carthage, and in turn falling before the men of the North--Goth, Vandal,
Hun, Frank, and Gaul; the Mogul and the Tartar upon China and India;
the Turk upon Southern Europe, Asia, and Africa; and to-day, like black
clouds of destiny, the Russian hordes hang over the troubled governments
of more educated Europe. Look at Italy during the middle ages--the focus
of learning and the arts for all Christendom, and yet an easy prey for
every barbarous adventurer; and in England the Briton yields to the
Saxon, who in turn falls before the Norman. It would be truer to say
that Prussia owes her military successes to the ignorance of her people,
though they nearly all can read and write. Had she had to deal with
intelligent, enlightened, and thinking populations, she could not have
made the country a camp of soldiers.
The Prussian policy of “blood and iron” has been carried out, in defiance
of the wishes of the people as expressed through their representatives,
who were snubbed and scolded and sent back home as though they were a
pack of schoolboys; yet the people looked on in stolid indifference, and
allowed the tax to be levied after they had refused to grant it.
We will now follow M. de Laveleye a step farther.
“With regard to elementary instruction,” he says, “the Protestant states
are incomparably more advanced than the Catholic. England alone is no
more than on a level with the latter, probably because the Anglican
Church, of all the reformed forms of worship, has most in common with the
Church of Rome.”
If any one has good reason to praise education, and above all the
education of the people, certainly we Catholics have. The Catholic
Church created the people; she first preached the divine doctrine of the
brotherhood and equality of all men before God, which has wrought and
must continue to work upon society until all men shall be recognized
as equals by the law. She drew around woman her magic circle; from the
slave struck his fetters and bade him be a man; lifted to her bosom the
child; baptized all humanity into the inviolable sacredness of Christ’s
divinity; she appealed, and still appeals, from the tyranny of brute
force and success, in the name of the eternal liberties of the soul, to
God. Her martyrs were and are the martyrs of liberty; and if she were not
to-day, all men would accept accomplished facts and bow before whatever
succeeds.
The barbarians, who have developed into the civilized peoples of Europe,
despised learning as they contemned labor. War was their business. The
knight signed his name with his sword, in blood; the pen, like the
spade, was made for servile hands. To destroy this ignorant, idle life
of pillage and feud, the church organized an army, unlike any the world
had ever seen, unlike any it will ever see outside her pale--an army
of monks, who, with faith in Christ and the higher life, believed in
knowledge and in work. They became the cultivators of the mind and soil
of Europe.
“The praise,” says Hallam, speaking of the middle ages, “of having
originally established schools belongs to some bishops and abbots of the
VIth century.”
Ireland is converted and at once becomes a kind of university for all
Europe. In England the episcopal sees became centres of learning.
Wherever a cathedral was built a school with a library grew up under its
shadow. Pope Eugenius II., in a council held in Rome in 826, ordered that
schools should be established throughout Christendom at cathedral and
parochial churches and other suitable places. The Council of Mayence,
in 813, admonishes parents that they are in duty bound to send their
children to school. The Synod of Orleans, in 800, enjoins the erection in
towns and villages of schools for elementary instruction, and adds that
no remuneration shall be received except such as the parents voluntarily
offer. The Third General Council of Lateran, in 1179, commanded that in
all cathedral churches a fund should be set aside for the foundation and
support of schools for the poor. Free schools were thus first established
by the Catholic Church. The monasteries were the libraries where the arts
and letters of a civilization that had perished were carefully treasured
up for the rekindling of a brighter and better day.
As early as the XIIth century many of the universities of Europe were
fully organized. Italy took the lead, with universities at Rome Bologna,
Padua, Naples, Pavia, and Perugia--the sources
“Whence many rivulets have since been turned,
O’er the garden Catholic to lead
Their living waters, and have fed its plants.”
The schools founded at Oxford and Cambridge in the IXth and Xth centuries
had in the XIIth grown to be universities. At Oxford there were thirty
thousand, at Paris twenty-five thousand, and at Padua twenty thousand
students. Scattered over Europe at the time Luther raised his voice
against the church were sixty six universities.
“Time went on,” says Dr. Newman, speaking of the mediæval
universities; “a new state of things, intellectual and social,
came in; the church was girt with temporal power; the preachers
of S. Dominic were in the ascendant: now, at length, we may
ask with curious interest, did the church alter her ancient
rule of action, and proscribe intellectual activity? Just the
contrary; this is the very age of universities; it is the
classical period of the schoolmen; it is the splendid and
palmary instance of the wise policy and large liberality of
the church, as regards philosophical inquiry. If there ever
was a time when the intellect went wild, and had a licentious
revel, it was at the date I speak of. When was there ever a
more curious, more meddling, bolder, keener, more penetrating,
more rationalistic exercise of the reason than at that time?
What class of questions did that subtle metaphysical spirit not
scrutinize? What premise was allowed without examination? What
principle was not traced to its first origin, and exhibited
in its most naked shape?… Well, I repeat, here was something
which came somewhat nearer to theology than physical research
comes; Aristotle was a somewhat more serious foe then, beyond
all mistake, than Bacon has been since. Did the church take a
high hand with philosophy then? No, not though that philosophy
was metaphysical. It was a time when she had temporal power,
and could have exterminated the spirit of inquiry with fire and
sword; but she determined to put it down by _argument_; she
said: ‘Two can play at that, and my argument is the better.’
She sent her controversialists into the philosophical arena. It
was the Dominican and Franciscan doctors, the greatest of them
being S. Thomas, who in those mediæval universities fought the
battle of revelation with the weapons of heathenism.”[249]
To find fault with the church because popular education in the middle
ages was not organized and general as it has since become would be
as wise as to pick a quarrel with the ancient Greeks for not having
railroads, or with the Romans because they had no steamships. Reading and
writing were not taught then universally as they are now because it was
physically and morally impossible that they should have been. Without
steam and the printing-press, common-school systems would not now be
practicable, nor would the want of them be felt. We have great reason to
be thankful that the art of printing was invented and America discovered
before Luther burned the Pope’s bull, else we should be continually
bothered with refuting the cause-and-effect historians who would have
infallibly traced both these events to the Wittenberg conflagration.
All Europe was still Catholic when gunpowder drove old Father Schwarz’s
pestle through the ceiling, when Gutenberg made his printing-press, when
Columbus landed in the New World; and these are the forces which have
battered down the castles of feudalism, have brought knowledge within the
reach of all, and some measure of redress to the masses of the Old World,
by affording them the possibility and opportunity of liberty in the New.
These forces would have wrought to even better purpose had Protestantism
not broken the continuity and homogeneity of Christian civilization. The
Turk would not rest like a blight from heaven upon the fairest lands of
Europe and Asia, nor the darkness of heathenism upon India and China, had
the civilized nations remained of one faith; and thus, though our own
train might have rushed less rapidly down the ringing grooves of change,
the whole human race would have advanced to a level which there now seems
but little reason to hope it will ever reach.
But to come more nearly to M. de Laveleye’s assertion that the Protestant
states are incomparably more advanced than the Catholic, with the
exception of England, which in this matter is at least up to the standard
of Catholic countries. In the report of the Commissioner of Education for
1874 there is a statistical account of the state of education in foreign
countries which throws some light upon this subject.
The school attendance, compared with the population, is in Austria as
1 to 10; in Belgium, as 1 to 10½; in Ireland, as 1 to 16; in Catholic
Switzerland, as 1 to 16; in England, as 1 to 17. In Bavaria it is as 1
to 7, upon the authority of Kay, in his _Social Condition of the People
in England and Europe_. Catholic Austria, Bavaria, Belgium, and Ireland
have proportionately a larger school attendance than Protestant England.
England and Wales (report of 1874), with a population of 22,712,266,
had a school population of 5,374,700, of whom only about half were
registered, and not half of these attended with sufficient regularity to
bring grants to their schools. Ireland, with a population of 5,411,416,
had on register 1,006,511, or nearly half as many as England and Wales,
though her population is not a fourth of that of these two countries.
“The statistical fact,” says Laing, speaking of Rome as it was under the
popes, “that Rome has above a hundred schools more than Berlin, for a
population little more than half that of Berlin, puts to flight a world
of humbug about systems of national education carried on by governments
and their moral effects on society.… In Catholic Germany, in France,
Italy, and even Spain, the education of the common people in reading,
writing, arithmetic, music, manners, and morals, is at least as generally
diffused and as faithfully promoted by the clerical body as in Scotland.
It is by their own advance, and not by keeping back the advance of the
people, that the popish (_sic_) priesthood of the present day seek to
keep ahead of the intellectual progress of the community in Catholic
lands; and they might, perhaps, retort on our Presbyterian clergy, and
ask if they, too, are in their countries at the head of the intellectual
movement of the age. Education is in reality not only not repressed, but
is encouraged, by the popish church, and is a mighty instrument in its
hands, and ably used.”[250]
Professor Huxley’s testimony is confirmatory of this admission of Laing.
“It was my fortune,” he says, “some time ago to pay a visit to one
of the most important of the institutions in which the clergy of the
Roman Catholic Church in these islands are trained; and it seemed to me
that the difference between these men and the comfortable champions of
Anglicanism and Dissent was comparable to the difference between our
gallant Volunteers and the trained veterans of Napoleon’s Old Guard. The
Catholic priest is trained to know his business and do it effectually.
The professors of the college in question, learned, zealous, and
determined men, permitted me to speak frankly with them. We talked like
outposts of opposed armies during a truce--as friendly enemies; and when
I ventured to point out the difficulties their students would have to
encounter from scientific thought, they replied: ‘Our church has lasted
many ages, and has passed safely through many storms. The present is but
a new gust of the old tempest; and we do not turn out our young men less
fitted to weather it than they have been in former times to cope with the
difficulties of those times.’”[251]
“It is a common remark,” says Kay, “of the operatives of Lancashire,
and one which is only too true: ‘Your church is a church for the rich,
but not for the poor. It was not intended for such people as we are.’
The Roman church is much wiser than the English in this respect.… It is
singular to observe how the priests of Romanist (_sic_) countries abroad
associate with the poor. I have often seen them riding with the peasants
in their carts along the roads, eating with them in their houses,
sitting with them in the village inns, mingling with them in their
village festivals, and yet always preserving their authority.”[252]
With us, too, the masses of the people are fast abandoning Protestantism.
There is no Catholic country in Europe in which the social condition of
the masses is so wretched as in England, the representative Protestant
country. For three hundred years, it may be said, the Catholic Church
had no existence there. The nation was exclusively under Protestant
influence; and yet the lower classes were suffered to remain in stolid
ignorance, until they became the most degraded population in Christendom.
“It has been calculated,” says Kay, writing in 1850, “that there are
at the present day, in England and Wales, nearly 8,000,000 persons who
cannot read and write.” That was more than half of the whole population
at that time. But this is not the worst. A population ignorant of
reading and writing may nevertheless, to a certain extent, be educated
through religious teaching and influence; but these unhappy creatures
were left, helpless and hopeless, to sink deeper and deeper beneath the
weight of their degradation, without being brought into contact with
any power that could refine or elevate them; and if their condition has
somewhat improved in the last quarter of a century, this is no more to
be attributed to Protestantism than the Catholic Emancipation Act or the
Atlantic cable.
THE SEVEN FRIDAYS IN LENT
First, thy most holy Passion, dearest Lord,
Doth set the keynote of our love and tears;
And then thy holy Crown of Thorns appears--
Strange diadem for thee, of lords the Lord!
The holy Lance and Nails we clasp and hoard:
What pierced thee sore heals sin-sick souls to-day;
Then thy Five Wounds we glorify for aye--
Hands, feet, and broken Heart, beloved, adored.
Now tears of bitter grief flow fast like rain:
Our Lord’s most Precious Blood for us flows fast.
Alas! what tears of ours, what love, what pain,
Can match that tide of blood and love and woe?
Mother, we turn to thy Seven Griefs at last;
Teach us to stand, with thee, the cross below.
ARE YOU MY WIFE?
BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,”
ETC.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SEARCH NEARLY OVER.
It was one of those exquisitely lovely mornings that we sometimes see
in early spring. The night had been frosty, and had hurried to meet the
dawn, leaving her moonlight mantle behind her, frozen to silver, on every
field or hill-side. The sky was of a heavenly blue--liquid turquoise,
swept with feathery dashes of pink, that set off the glistening landscape
like a velvet curtain spread for the purpose. The sun was shining through
a pearly mist that hung, a silver gauze veil, in the air and made
everything look dreamy and vision-like. The meadows were silvered with
frost; so were the hedges--every twig and thorn finished like a jewel.
The trees stood up like immense bouquets of filigree against the pink and
blue curtain. No wonder Franceline, who had been awake and watching the
sunrise from her window, stole a march on Angélique, and hastened out to
enjoy the beauty of the morning. It was impossible it could hurt her; it
was too lovely to be unkind. But besides this outward incentive, there
was another one that impelled her to the daring escapade. She felt an
irresistible longing to go to church this morning--one of those longings
that she called presentiments, and seldom rejected without having reason
to regret it. It was not that she was uneasy, or alarmed, or unhappy
about anything. Nothing had occurred to awake the dormant fires that
were still smouldering--though she thought them dead--and impel her to
seek for strength in a threatened renewal of the combat. Sir Simon’s
disappearance the morning after the dinner-party, some few days ago,
had not surprised her; that was his way, and this time she had been
prepared for it. It was true that ever since then her father had been
more preoccupied, more inseparable from his work. It was a perfect mania
with him for the last three or four days. He scarcely let the pen out of
his hand from morning till night. He seemed, moreover, to have got to a
point where he could no longer use her as an amanuensis, but must write
himself. Franceline was distressed at the change; it deprived her of
the pleasure of helping him and of their daily walk together, which had
of late become the principal enjoyment of her life. But he could not be
persuaded to go beyond the garden gate, and then only for ten minutes to
take a breath of air. He was in a hurry to get back to his study, as if
the minutes were so much gold wasted. Franceline was obliged to accept
this sudden alteration in his habits, with the assurance that it would
not be for long; that the great work was drawing to a close; and that,
when it was finished, he would be free to walk with her as much as she
liked, and in more beautiful places than Dullerton. This last she did
not believe. No place could ever be so beautiful as this familiar one,
because none would ever be hallowed by the same sweet early memories,
or sanctified by the same sufferings and regrets. There was a spirit
brooding over these quiet sylvan slopes that could never dwell, for her,
elsewhere. She looked around her at the leafless woods that lay white and
silent in the near distance, and at the river winding slowly towards them
like an azure arm encircling the silver fields, and she sighed at the
thought of ever leaving them. The sigh escaped from her lips in a little
column of sapphire smoke; for the air was as clear as crystal, but it was
cold too, and the bell was already ringing; so she drew her shawl closer
and hurried on. What was that fly doing before the presbytery door? Who
could have business with Father Henwick at such an unearthly hour as
seven A.M.? When people live in a small place where everybody’s life is a
routine as well known as their own to everybody else, the smallest trifle
out of the usual way is magnified into an event. Franceline was not
very curious by nature; she passed the mysterious fly with a momentary
glance of interest, and then dismissed it from her thoughts. The little
white-washed church was never full on week-days, its congregation being
mostly of the class who can only afford the luxury of going to church
on Sundays. A few kindly glances greeted her as she walked up to her
place near the sanctuary. Since her health had become delicate, it was a
rare occurrence to see her there during the week, so her presence was
looked on as of good omen. She answered the welcoming eyes with a sweet,
grateful smile, and then knelt down and soon forgot them.
We talk of magnetic atmospheres where instinct warns us of a presence
without any indication from our senses. I don’t know whether Franceline
believed in such influences; but her attitude of rapt devotion as she
knelt before the altar, seemingly unconscious of anything earthly near
her, her soul drawn upwards through her eyes and fixed on the Unseen,
did not suggest that there was any human presence within reach which had
power to move her. When Father Henwick had left the altar, she rose and
went to the sacristy door to ask if she could see him. She wanted to
speak to him about a poor woman in the village. It was not the clerk,
but Father Henwick himself, who came to answer her message. He did not
welcome his young penitent in his usual gracious, affectionate manner,
but asked sharply “who gave her leave to be out at that hour?”
“The morning was so sunny I thought it would do me no harm to come,”
replied the culprit, with a sudden sense of having done something very
wicked.
“You had no business to think about it at all; you should not have come
without your father’s permission. Go home as fast as you can.”
Franceline was turning away, when he called her back.
“Come this way; you can go out through the house.” Then he added in a
mollified tone: “You foolish child! I hope you are warmly clad? Keep your
chest well covered, and hold your muff up to your mouth. Be off, now, as
quick as you can, and let me have no more of these tricks!”
He shook hands with her, half-smiling, half-frowning, and, opening the
sacristy door that led into the presbytery, hurried her away. Franceline
was too much discomfited by the abrupt dismissal to conjecture why she
was hustled out through the house instead of being allowed to go back
through the church, the natural way, and quite as short. She could not
understand why Father Henwick should have shown such annoyance and
surprise at the sight of her. This was not the first time she had played
the trick on them at home of coming out to church on a sunny morning, and
it had never done her any harm. She was turning the riddle in her mind,
as she passed through the little sitting-room into the entry, when she
saw the front door standing wide open, and a gentleman outside speaking
to the fly-man. The moment he perceived Franceline he raised his hat and
remained uncovered while he spoke.
“Good-morning, mademoiselle! How is M. de la Bourbonais?”
“Thank you, my father is quite well.”
She and Clide looked at each other as they exchanged this commonplace
greeting; but they did not shake hands. Neither could probably have
explained what the feeling was that held them back. Franceline went on
her way, and Clide de Winton entered the presbytery, each bearing away
the sound of the other’s voice and the sweetness of that rapid glance
with a terrible sense of joy.
Franceline’s heart beat high within her as she walked on. What right had
it to do so? How dared it? Poor, fluttering heart! No bitter upbraidings
of indignant conscience, no taunts of womanly pride, could make it stop.
The more she tried to silence it, the louder it cried. She was close by
The Lilies, and it was crying out and throbbing wildly still. She could
not go in and face her father in this state; she must gain a few minutes
to collect and calm herself. The snow-drops grew in great profusion on
a bank in the park at the back of the cottage. Raymond was fond of wild
flowers; she would go and gather him some: this would account for her
delay. She laid her muff on the grass. It was wet with the hoar-frost
melting in the sun; but Franceline did not see this. She stooped down and
began to pluck the snow-drops. It was a congenial task in her present
frame of mind. Snow-drops had always been favorites with her. In her
childish days of innocent pantheism she used to fancy that flowers had
spirits, or some instinct that enabled them to enjoy and to suffer, to be
glad in the sunshine and unhappy in the cold and the rain. She fancied
that perfume was their language, and that they conversed in it as birds
do in songs and chirpings. She used to be sorry for the flowers that had
no perfume, and called them “the dumb ones,” connecting their fate in
some vague, pitying way with that of two deaf and dumb little children
in the village. But the snow-drops she pitied most of all. They came in
the winter-time, when everything was cold and dreary and there were no
kindred flowers to keep them company; no roses; no bees and butterflies
to make music for them; no nightingales to sing them to sleep in the
scented summer nights; no liquid, starry skies and sweet, warm dews
to kiss them as they slept; their pale, ascetic little slumbers were
attuned to none of these fragrant melodies, and Franceline loved them
all the more for their loveless, lonely life. But she was not pitying
them now, as, one by one, she plucked the drooping bells and the bright
green leaves under the silver hedge; she was envying them and listening
to them. Every flower and blade of grass has a message for us, if we
could but hear it; the woods and fields are all tablets on which the
primitive scriptures of creative love are written for us. “Your life
is to be like ours,” the snow-drops were whispering to Franceline. “We
dwell alone in cold and silence--so must you; we have no sister flowers
to make life joyous, no roses to gladden us with their perfume and
their beauty--neither shall you; roses are emblems of love, and love is
not for you. You must be content with us. We are the emblems of purity
and hope; take us to your heart. We are the heralds of the spring;
we bring the promise, but we do not wait for its fulfilment. You are
happier than we; you will not have the summer here, but you know that it
will come hereafter, and that the flowers and fruits will be only the
more beautiful for the waiting being prolonged. Look upwards, sister
snow-drop, and take courage.” Franceline listened to the mystic voice,
and, as she did so, large tears fell from her eyes on the white bells of
the messengers, as pure as the crystal dew that stood in frozen tears
upon their leaves.
M. de la Bourbonais had not heard her go out; and when she came in and
handed him her bouquet, fresh-gathered, he took for granted she had gone
out for the purpose, and did not chide her for the slight imprudence.
Angélique was not so lenient; she was full of wrath against the truant,
and threatened to go at once and inform on her, which Franceline remarked
she might have done an hour ago, if she had any such intention; and then,
with a kiss and two arms thrown around the old woman’s mahogany neck, it
was all made right between them.
Franceline did not venture out again that day. She was afraid of meeting
Clide. She strove hard to forget the morning’s incident, to stifle the
emotions it had given rise to, and to turn away her thoughts from even
conjecturing the possible cause of Mr. de Winton’s presence at Dullerton
and at Father Henwick’s. But strive as she might, the thoughts would
return, and her mind would dwell on them. She was horrified to see the
effect that Clide’s presence had had on her; to find how potent his
memory was with her still, how it had stirred the slumbering depths and
broken up the stagnant surface-calm of her heart, filling it once more
with wild hopes and ardent longings that she had fondly imagined crushed
and buried for ever. Was her hard-earned self-conquest a sham after all?
She could not help fearing it when she saw how persistently the idea
kept returning again and again to her, banish it as she would: “Had he
come to tell Father Henwick that he was free?” Then she wondered, if it
were so, what Father Henwick would do; whether he would come and see her
immediately, or let things take their course through Sir Simon and her
father. Then again she would discard this notion as impossible, and see
all sorts of evidence in the circumstances of the morning’s episode to
prove that it could not be. Why should Father Henwick have tried so hard
to prevent their meeting, if the one obstacle to it were removed? and why
should Clide have been so restrained and distant when she came upon him
suddenly? If only she could ask this one question and have it answered,
Franceline thought she could go back again to her state of stagnation,
and trample down her rebellious heart into submission once more.
She slept very little that night, and the next morning she determined
that she would go out at any risk. Sitting still all day in this state
of mind was unbearable; so about eleven o’clock, when the sun was high
and the frost melted, she put on her bonnet and said she was going for a
walk to see Miss Merrywig. As the day was fine and she had not taken cold
yesterday, Angélique made no difficulty. Franceline started off to the
wood, and was soon crushing the snow-drops and the budding lemon-colored
primroses as she threaded her way along the foot-paths.
For some mysterious reason which no one could fathom, but which the
oldest inhabitant of the place remembered always to have existed, you
were kept an hour waiting at Miss Merrywig’s before the door was opened.
You rang three times, waited an age between each ring, and then Keziah,
the antediluvian factotum of the establishment, came limping along the
passage, and, after another never-ending interval of unbarring and
unbolting, you were let in. It was not Keziah who opened the door for
Franceline this morning; it was Miss Merrywig herself, shawled and
bonneted, ready to go out.
“O my dear child! _is_ it you? I am _so_ delighted to see you! Do come
in! No, no, I am _not_ going out. That is to say, I _am_ going out. It’s
the luckiest thing that you did not come two minutes later, or you would
not have found me. I _am_ so glad! No, no, you are not putting me about
the least bit in the world. Come and sit down, and I’ll explain all about
it. I _cannot_ imagine what is keeping Keziah, and she knows I am waiting
to be off, and that the negus will be getting cold, though it was boiling
mad, and I _have_ only this moment put it into the flask. But what can
be keeping her? It didn’t so much matter; in fact, it didn’t matter at
all, only I _have_ promised little Jemmy Torrens--you know Mary Torrens’
boy on the green?--well, I _promised_ him I would make the negus for
him myself and _take_ it to him myself. He won’t take anything except
from me, poor little fellow! You see he’s known me since I was a baby--I
mean since _he_ was--and that’s why, I suppose; and Keziah knows it, and
why she dallies so long I _cannot_ conceive! She knows I can’t leave
the house unprotected and go off before she comes in--there are so many
tramps about, you see, my dear. It _is_ provoking of Keziah!”
“Let me take the negus to Jemmy,” said Franceline, when there was a break
in the stream and she was able to edge in a word. “I will explain why you
could not go.”
“Oh! that’s _just_ like you to be _so_ kind, my dear; but I _promised_,
you see, and I really _must_ go myself. What can Keziah be about?”
“Then go, and I will wait and keep the house until either of you comes
back,” suggested Franceline.
“Oh! that _is_ a bright idea. That is as witty as it is kind. Well, then,
I will just run off. I shall find you here when I return. I won’t be
twenty minutes away, and you can amuse yourself looking over _Robinson
Crusoe_ till I come back; here it is!” And the old lady rooted out a
book from under a pile of all sorts of odds and ends on the table, and
handed it to Franceline. “Sit down, now, and read that; there’s nothing I
enjoyed like that book when I was your age, and, indeed, I make a point
of reading it at least once every year regularly.”
With this she took up her wine-flask, well wrapped in flannel to protect
her from the scalding-hot contents, and bustled away.
“If any one rings, am I to let them in?” inquired Franceline, running
into the hall after her.
“Oh! no, certainly not, unless it happens to be Mr. Langrove; you would
not mind opening the door to _him_, would you?”
“Not the least; but how shall I know it is he?”
“You will be sure to hear the footsteps first and the click of the gate
outside, and then run out and peep through _this_,” pointing to the
narrow latticed window in the entry; “but you must be quick, or else they
will be close to the door and see you.”
Franceline promised to keep a sharp lookout for the warning steps,
closed the door on Miss Merrywig, and went back to _Robinson Crusoe_;
but she was not in a mood to enjoy Friday’s philosophy, so she sat down
and began to look about her in the queer little apartment. It was much
more like a lumber-room than a sitting-room; the large round table in
the middle was littered with every description of rubbish--the letters
of two generations of Miss Merrywig’s correspondents, old pamphlets,
odds and ends of ribbon and lace, little boxes, bags of stale biscuits
that were kept for the pet dogs of her friends when they came to visit
her, quantities of china cats and worsted monkeys, samplers made for her
by great-grandnieces, newspapers of the year one, tracts and books of
hymns, all huddled pell-mell together. Fifty years’ smoke and lamp-light
had painted the ceiling all over in dense black clouds, and the cobwebs
of innumerable defunct spiders festooned the cornices. The carpet had
half a century ago been bright with poppies and bluebells and ferns; but
these vanities, like the memory of the unrighteous man, had been blotted
out, and had left no trace behind them. Franceline was considering how
singular it was that anything so bright and simple and happy as Miss
Merrywig should be the presiding genius of this abode of incongruous
rubbish, and wishing she could make a clean sweep of it all, and tidy the
place a little, when her attention was roused by a sound of footsteps.
She ran out at once to look through the lattice; but she had waited too
long. There was only time to shrink behind the door when the visitors
had come up and the bell was sounding through the cottage. There were
two persons, if not more; she knew this by the footsteps. Presently some
one spoke; it was Mr. Charlton. He was continuing, in a low voice, a
conversation already begun. Then another voice answered, speaking in a
still lower key; but every word was distinctly audible through the open
casement, which was so covered by an outer iron bar and the straggling
stem of a japonica that no one from the outside would see that it was
open, unless they looked very close. The words Franceline overheard
had nothing in them to make her turn pale; but the voice was Clide de
Winton’s. What fatality was this that brought them so near again, and
yet kept them apart, and condemned her to hide and listen to him like an
eavesdropper? There was a pause after the first ring. Mr. Charlton knew
the ways of the house; he said something laughingly, and rang again.
Then they reverted to the conversation that had been interrupted. Good
God! did Franceline’s ears deceive her, or what were these words she
heard coupled with her father’s name? She put her hand to her lips with
a sudden movement to stifle the cry that leaped up from her heart of
hearts. She heard Clide giving an emphatic denial: “I don’t believe it. I
tell you it is some mistake--one of those unaccountable mistakes that we
can’t explain or understand, but which we _know_ must be mistakes.”
She could not catch what Mr. Charlton said; but he was evidently
dissenting from Clide, and muttered something about “being convicted on
his own showing,” which the other answered with an impatient exclamation
the drift of which Franceline could not seize; neither could she make
sense out of the short comments that followed. They referred to some
facts or circumstances that were clear to the speakers, but only
bewildered her more and more.
“It strikes me the old lady does not mean to let us in at all this time,”
said Mr. Charlton; and he gave another violent pull to the bell.
“There can’t be any one in the house,” said Clide, after a pause that
exhausted the patience of both. “We may as well come away. I will call
later. I must see her before.…”
The rest of the sentence was lost, as the two speakers walked down the
gravel-walk, conversing in the same low tones.
Franceline did not move even when the sound of their steps had long died
away. She seemed turned to stone, and did not stir from the spot until
Keziah came back. She gave her a message for Miss Merrywig, left the
cottage, and went home.
She found her father just as she had left him--busy at his desk, with
books and papers strewn on the table beside him. She saw this through the
window, but did not go in to him. She could not go at once and speak to
him as if nothing had happened in the interval. She went to her room, and
remained there until dinner-time, and then came down, half-dreading to
see some alteration in him corresponding with what had taken place in her
own mind. But he was gentle and serene as usual. No mental disturbance
was visible on his features; at least, she did not see it. Looking at
him, nevertheless, with perceptions quickened by what she had heard since
they parted, it struck her that his eyes were sunk and dim, as if from
overwork and want of sleep combined; but there was no cloud of shame or
humiliation on his brow. Never had that dear head seemed so venerable,
never had such a halo of nobleness and goodness encircled it, in his
daughter’s eyes, as at this moment.
She did not tease him to come out to walk with her, but asked him to read
aloud to her for an hour while she worked. It was a long time--more than
a week--since they had had any reading aloud. Raymond complied with the
request, but soon returned to his work.
Franceline expected that Father Henwick would call, and kept nervously
looking out of the window from time to time; but the day wore on, and
the evening, and he did not come. She did not know whether to be glad
or sorry. She was in that frame of feeling when the gentlest touch of
sympathy would have stung her like the bite of a snake. It was not
sympathy she wanted, but a voice to join with her in passionate contempt
for the liars who had dared to slander her father, and in indignant
denunciation of the lie. She wanted to fling it in the teeth of those
who had uttered it. If Father Henwick would help her to do this, let him
come; if not, let him leave her alone. Let no one come near her with
words of pity; pity for her now meant contempt for her father. She would
resent it as a lioness might resent the food that was thrown to her in
place of the cubs she had been robbed of. No love--no, not the best and
noblest she had ever dreamed of--would compensate her for the absence of
reverence and respect for her father.
But Clide did not suspect him. She had heard him indignantly spurn the
idea. “He no more stole it than you did,” he had said. Stolen what? Would
no one come to tell her what it all meant? Would not Clide come? Was he
still at Dullerton? Was there any fear--or hope?--of her meeting him
again if she went out? She might have gone with impunity. Clide was far
enough away, on a very different errand from that which had brought him
yesterday across her path.
* * * * *
On coming back to the Court from his abortive attempt to see Miss
Merrywig, Clide found Stanton in great excitement with a telegram that
had arrived for his master that instant. It was from Sir Simon, summoning
him back by the first train that started. Some important news awaited
him. He did not wait to see Miss Merrywig, but took the next train to
London, and arrived there in the early afternoon. The news that awaited
him was startling enough to justify Sir Simon’s peremptory summons. One
of the detectives, whose sagacity and coolness fitted him for delicate
missions of the kind, had been despatched to gather information in the
principal lunatic asylums of England and Scotland. He had come that
morning to tell Sir Simon Harness that he thought he had found Mrs. de
Winton in one of them. Sir Simon went straight to the place, and, after
an interview with the superintendent, telegraphed for Clide, as we have
seen.
It was an old-fashioned Elizabethan manor-house in the suburbs of London,
situated in the midst of grounds almost large enough to be called a park.
There was nothing in the outward aspect of the place to suggest its real
character. Everything was bright and peaceful and well ordered as in the
abode of a wealthy private family. The gardens were beautifully kept; the
shrubbery was trim and neat; summer-houses with pretty climbing plants
rose in shady places, inviting the inmates of the fine old mansion to sit
out of doors and enjoy the sunshine unmolested; for there was sunshine in
this early spring-time, and here in this sheltered spot some bits of red
and gold and blue were peeping through the tips of closed flower-cups.
Nothing externally hinted at the discord and disorder that reigned in so
many human lives within the walls. The sight of the place was soothing
to Clide. He had so often pictured to himself another sort of dwelling
for his unhappy Isabel that it was a great relief to him to see this
well-ordered, calm abode, and to think of her being a resident there. A
lady-like matron received him, and conversed with him kindly and sensibly
while they were waiting for the doctor to come in. The latter accosted
him with the same reassuring frankness of manner.
“I hope,” he said, “that your informant has not exaggerated matters, as
that class of people are so apt to do, and that you are _expecting_ to
see the right person. All I dare say to you is that you may hope; the
points of coincidence are striking enough to warrant hope, but by no
means such as to establish a certainty.”
“I am too much taken by surprise to have arrived at any conclusion,”
replied Clide; “and I have been too often disappointed to do so in a
hurry. Until I see and speak to the patient I can say nothing.”
“You can see her at once. As to speaking to her, that is not so easy. The
sun is clouding over. That is unlucky at this moment.”
His visitor looked surprised.
“Oh! I forgot that I had not explained to you the nature of the delusion
which this lady is suffering from,” continued the medical man. “It is
one of the most poetic fancies that madness ever engendered in a human
brain. She is enamored of the sun, and fancies herself beloved of him;
she believes him to be a benign deity whose love she has been privileged
to win, and which she passionately responds to. But there is more
suffering than joy in this belief. She fancies that when the sun shines
he is pleased with her, and that when he ceases to shine he is angry;
the sunbeams are his smiles and the warmth his kisses. At such times she
will deck herself out with flowers and gay colors, and sit and sing to
her lover by the hour, pretending to turn away her face and hide from
him, and going through all the pretty coyness of love. Then suddenly,
when the sun draws behind a cloud, she will burst into tears, fling aside
her wreath, and give way to every expression of grief and despair. It is
at such moments, when they are prolonged, that the crisis is liable to
become dangerous. She flings herself on the ground, and cries out to her
lover to forgive her and look on her kindly again, or she will die. Very
often she cries herself to sleep in this way. I fear you have come at an
unfortunate moment, for the sun seems quite clouded; however, he may come
out again, and then you will get a glimpse of the patient at her best.”
He rose and led the way upstairs along a softly-carpeted corridor with
doors opening on either side. Pointing to one, he motioned Clide to
advance. One of the panels was perforated so as to admit of the keeper’s
seeing what went on inside when it was necessary to watch the patient,
without irritating her by seeming to do so or remaining in the room. At
first the occupant was standing up at the window, her hands clasped,
while she conversed with herself or some invisible companion in low tones
of entreaty. Then, uttering a feeble cry, she turned mournfully away,
laid aside the flowers that decked her long black hair, and, taking a
large black cloak, drew it over her dress, and sat down in a dark corner
of the room, with her face to the wall, crying to herself like a child.
Clide watched her go through all this with growing emotion. He had not
yet been able to catch a glimpse of her face, but the small, light
figure, the wayward movements, the streaming black hair, all reminded him
strikingly of Isabel. The voice was too inarticulate, so far, for him to
pronounce on its resemblance with any certainty; but the low, plaintive
tones fell on his ear like the broken bars of an unforgotten melody. He
strained every nerve to see the features. But, stay! She is moving. She
has drawn away her hands from her face, and has turned it towards him.
The movement did not, however, dispel his doubts; it increased them.
It was almost impossible to discover any trace of beauty in that worn,
haggard face, with its sharp features, its eyes faded and sunk, and from
which the tears streamed in torrents, as if they were melting away in
brine. The skin was shrivelled like an old woman’s--one, at least, double
the age that Isabel would be now. Was it possible that this wreck could
be the bright, beautiful girl of ten years ago?
“Are _you_ my wife?” was Clide’s mental exclamation, as he looked at the
sad spectacle, and then, with a shudder, turned away.
“I see you are unable to arrive at any conclusion,” said the doctor when
they were out of ear-shot in an adjoining room.
“I will say nothing till I have spoken to her,” replied the young man
evasively. “When can I do this?”
“I cannot possibly fix a time. She is not in a mood to be approached
now; any violent shock in her present state might have a fatal result.
It would, in all probability, quench for ever the feeble spark of light
that still remains, and might bring on a crisis which no skill could
alleviate. On the other hand, if we could apply the test at the right
moment, the effect might be unexpectedly beneficial. I say unexpectedly,
because, for my own part, I have not the slightest hope of any such
result.”
“Has her memory quite gone, or does she recall any passages of her past
life accurately?”
“Not accurately, I fancy; she seems to have some very vivid impressions
of the past, but whether they be clear or not I cannot say. The balance
of the mind is, I believe, too deeply shaken for clearness, even on
isolated points, to survive in any of the faculties. She talks frequently
of going over a great waterfall with her nurse, and describes scenery in
a way that rather gave me a hope once. I spoke to her guardian, however,
and he said she had never been near a waterfall in her life; that it was
some picture which had apparently dwelt in her imagination.”
“He might have his own reasons for deceiving you in that respect,”
observed Clide. “His name, you say, is Par…?
“Percival--Mr. Percival.”
“Humph! When people change their names, they sometimes find it convenient
to retain the initial,” remarked Clide.
He went home and desired Stanton to look out for a lodging as near as
possible to the asylum. A tolerably habitable one was found without
delay, and he and his valet installed themselves there at once. The very
next day he received a letter from Sir Simon Harness, informing him
that Lady Rebecca seemed this time in earnest about betaking herself
to a better world, and had desired him, Sir Simon, to be sent for
immediately. The French _dame de compagnie_ who wrote to him said they
hardly expected her to get through the week.
* * * * *
M. de la Bourbonais had never been a social man since he lived at
Dullerton. He said he did not care for society, and in one sense this
was true. He did not care for it unless it was composed of sympathetic
individuals; otherwise he preferred being without it. He did not want
to meet and talk with his fellow-creatures simply because they were his
fellow-creatures; there must be some common bond of interest or sympathy
between them and him, or else he did not want to see them. When, in the
early days at The Lilies, Sir Simon used to remonstrate with him on being
so “sauvage,” and wonder how he could bear the dulness, Raymond would
reply that no dulness oppressed him like uncongenial company. He had no
sympathies in common with the people about the neighborhood, and so he
would have no pleasure in associating with them. There was truth in this;
but Sir Simon knew that the count’s susceptible pride had influenced him
also. He did not want rich people to see his poverty, if they were not
refined and intelligent enough to respect it and value what went along
with it. He had studiously avoided cultivating any intimacies beyond
the few we know, and had so persistently kept aloof from the big houses
round about that they had accepted his determination not to go beyond
mere acquaintanceship, and never stopped to speak when they met him out
walking, but bowed and passed on. But of late Raymond began to feel quite
differently about all this. He longed to see these distant acquaintances
as if they had been so many near friends; to meet their glance of
kindly, if not cordial, recognition; to receive the homage of their
passing salutation. It was the dread of seeing these hitherto valueless
greetings refused that prevented him stirring beyond his own gate. He
marvelled himself at the void that the absence of them was making in
his life. He did not dream they had filled such a space in it; that the
reflection of his own self-respect in the respect of others had been
such a strength and such a need to him. Up to this time Franceline had
more than satisfied all his need of society at home, with the pleasant
periodical addition of Sir Simon’s presence, while his work had amply
supplied his intellectual wants; but suddenly he was made aware of a new
need--something undefined, but that he hungered for with a downright
physical hunger.
Franceline’s spirit and heart were too closely bound up in her father’s
not to feel the counter-pang of this mental hunger. She could not help
watching him, though she strove not to do it, and, above all, not to let
him see that she was watching him. She might as well have tried not to
draw her breath or to stop the pulsations of her heart. Her eyes would
fasten on him when he was not looking, and she could not but see that
the expression of his face was changed. A hard, resolved look had come
over it; his eyebrows were always protruded now, and his lips drawn
tight together under the gray fringe of his mustache. She knew every
turn of his features, and saw that what had once been a passing freak
under some sudden thought or puzzling speculation in his work had now
become a settled habit. She longed to speak; to invite him to speak. It
would have been so much easier for both; it would lighten the burden to
them so much if they could bear it together, instead of toiling under it
apart. But Raymond was silent. It never crossed his mind for a moment
that Franceline knew his secret. If he _had_ known it, would he have
spoken? Sometimes the poor child felt the silence was unbearable; that
at any cost she must break it and know the truth of the story which
had reached her in so monstrous a form. But the idea that her father
knew possibly nothing of it kept her back. But supposing he was silent
only to spare her? Perhaps he was debating in his own mind what the
effect of the revelation would be on her; wondering if she, too, would
join with his accusers, or, even if she did not do this, whether she
might not be ashamed of a father who was branded as a thief. When these
thoughts coursed through her mind, Franceline felt an almost irresistible
impulse to rush and fling her arms around his neck and tell him how
she venerated him, and how she scorned with all her might and main the
envious, malignant fools who dared to so misjudge him. But she never
yielded to the impulse; the inward conflict of lodgings and shrinkings
and passionate, tender cries of her heart to his made no outward sign.
Raymond sat writing away at his desk, and Franceline sat by the fire
or at the window reading and working, day after day. The idea occurred
to her more than once that she would write to Sir Simon; but she never
did. She did not dare open her heart to Father Henwick. How could she
bring herself to tell him that her father was accused of theft? It was
most probable--she hoped certain--that the abominable suspicion had not
travelled to his ears; and if so, she could not speak of it. This was
not her secret; it was no breach of confidence towards her spiritual
father to be silent, and the selfish longing to pour out her filial anger
and outraged love into a sympathizing ear should not hurry her into a
betrayal of what was, even in its falsity, humiliating to Raymond. It
was hard to refrain from speech when speech would have been a solace;
but Franceline knew that the sacrifice of the cup of cold water has its
reward, just as the bestowal has. Peace comes to us on surer and swifter
wing when we go straight to God for it, without putting the sympathy of
creatures between us and his touch.
Mr. Langrove had never been a frequent visitor at The Lilies; but
Franceline never remembered him to have been so long absent as now,
and she could not but see a striking coincidence in the fact. She knew
he had been one of the party at Dullerton that night; and if, as she
felt certain, that had been the occasion of the extraordinary mistake
she had heard of, the vicar, of course, knew all about it. He believed
her father had committed a theft, and was keeping aloof from him. Did
everybody at Dullerton know this? Mr. Langrove was not a man to spread
evil reports in any shape. Franceline knew him well enough to be sure
of that; but her father’s reputation was evidently at the mercy of less
charitable tongues. She did not know that the six witnesses had promised
Sir Simon to keep silence for his sake; but if she had known it, it would
not have much reassured her. A secret that is known to six people can
scarcely be considered safe. The six may mean to guard it, and may only
speak of it among themselves and in whispers; but it is astonishing how
far a whisper will travel sometimes, especially when it is malignant. A
vague impression had in some inexplicable way got abroad that the count
had done something which threw him under a cloud. The gentlemen of the
neighborhood were very discreet about it, and had said nothing positively
to be taken hold of, but it had leaked out that there was a screw loose
in that direction. Young Charlton had laughed at the notion of his friend
Anwyll thinking of Mlle. de la Bourbonais _now_; and the emphasis and
smile which accompanied the assurance expressed pretty clearly that there
was something amiss which had not been amiss a little while ago.
Franceline had gone out for her usual mid-day walk in the park. It was
the most secluded spot where she could take it, as well as warm and
sheltered. She was walking near the pond; the milk-white swans were
sailing towards her in the sunlight, expecting the bits of bread she
had taken a fancy to bring them every day at this hour, when she saw
Mr. Langrove emerge from behind a large rockery and step out into the
avenue. She trembled as if the familiar form of her old friend had been
a wild animal creeping out of the jungle to pounce upon her. What would
he do? Would he pass her by, or stop and just say a few cold words of
politeness? The vicar did not keep her long in suspense.
“Well! here, you are enjoying the sunshine, I see. And how are you?” he
said, extending his hand in the mild, affectionate way that Franceline
was accustomed to, but had never thought so sweet before. “Is the cough
quite gone?”
“Not quite; but I am better, thank you. Angélique says I am, and she
knows more about it than I do,” replied the invalid playfully. “How is
everybody at the vicarage?”
“So-so. Arabella has one of her bad colds, and Godiva is suffering from a
toothache. It’s the spring weather, no doubt; we will all be brisker by
and by. Are you going my way?”
“Any way; I only came for a walk.”
They walked on together.
“And how is M. de la Bourbonais?” said the vicar presently. “I’ve not met
him for a long time; we used to come across each other pretty often on
the road to Dullerton. He’s not poorly, I hope?”
“No, only busy--so dreadfully busy! He hardly lets the pen out of his
hand now; but he promises me there will soon be an end of it, and that
the book will soon be finished.”
“Bravo! And you have been such a capital little secretary to him!” said
Mr. Langrove. “The next thing will be that we shall have you writing a
book on your own account.”
Franceline laughed merrily at this conceit; her fears were, if not
banished by his cordial manner, sufficiently allayed to rid her of her
momentary awkwardness. They were soon chatting away about village gossip
as if nothing were amiss with either.
“Angélique brought home news from the market a few days ago that Mr.
Tobes was going to marry Miss Bulpit; is it true?” inquired the young
girl.
“Far too good to be true!” said the vicar, shaking his head. “The report
has been spread so often that this time I very nearly believed in it.
However, I saw Miss Bulpit, and she dispelled the illusion at once, and,
I fear, for ever.”
“But would it have been such a good thing if they got married?”
“It would be a very desirable event in some ways,” said Mr. Langrove,
with a peculiar smile; “it would give her something to do and some one to
look after her.”
“And it would have been a good thing for Mr. Tobes, too, would it not? He
is so poor!”
“That’s just why she won’t have him, poor fellow! When he proposed--she
told me the story herself, and I find she is telling it right and left,
so there is no breach of confidence in repeating it--when he proposed,
Miss Bulpit asked him point-blank how much money he had; ‘because,’ she
said, ‘I have only just enough for one!’”
“Oh! but that was a shame. She has plenty for two; and, besides, it was
unfeeling. Don’t you think it was?” inquired Franceline, looking up at
the vicar. But he evidently did not share either her indignation against
Miss Bulpit or her pity for the discarded lover. He was laughing quietly,
as if he enjoyed the joke.
They reached the gate going out on the high-road while thus pleasantly
chatting.
“Now I suppose we must say good-by,” said Mr. Langrove. “This is my way;
I am going to pay a sick visit down in the valley.”
They shook hands, and Franceline turned back.
“Mind you give my compliments to the count!” said the vicar, calling
after her. “Tell him I don’t dare go near him, as he is so busy; but if
he likes me to drop in of an evening, let him send me word by you, and
I’ll be delighted. By-by.”
He nodded to her and closed the gate behind him.
“He did not dare because he is so busy!” repeated Franceline as she
walked on. “How did he know papa was busy? It was I who told him so a few
minutes ago. That was an excuse.”
She gave the message, nevertheless, on coming home, scarcely daring to
look at her father while she did so.
“May I tell him to come in one of these evenings, petit père?”
“No; I cannot be disturbed at present,” was the peremptory answer, and
Franceline’s heart sank again.
She told him the gossip about Miss Bulpit and Mr. Tobes, thinking it
would amuse him; he used to listen complacently to the little bits of
gossip she brought in about their neighbors. Raymond had the charming
faculty, common to great men and learned men, of being easily and
innocently amused; but he seemed to have lost it of late. He listened to
Franceline’s chatter to-day with an absent air, as if he hardly took it
in; and before she had done, he made some irrelevant remark that proved
he had not been attending to what she was saying. Then he had got into
a way of repeating himself--of saying the same thing two or three times
over at an interval of an hour or so, sometimes even less. Franceline
attributed these things to the concentration of his thoughts on his work,
and to his being so entirely absorbed in it as not to pay attention to
anything that did not directly concern it. She was too inexperienced to
see therein symptoms of a more alarming nature.
M. de la Bourbonais had all his life complained of being a bad
sleeper; but Angélique, who suffered from the same infirmity, always
declared that he only imagined he did not sleep; that she was tossing
on her pillow, listening to him snoring, when he said he had been wide
awake. The count, on his side, was sceptical about Angélique’s “white
nights,” and privately confided to Franceline that he knew for a fact
she was fast asleep often when she fancied in the morning she had been
awake. Some people are very touchy at being doubted when they say they
have not “closed an eye all night.” Angélique resented a doubt on her
“white nights” bitterly, and Franceline, who from childhood had been
the confidant of both parties, found an early exercise for tact and
discretion in keeping the peace between them. The discrepancies in the
two accounts of their respective vigils often gave rise to little tiffs
between herself and Angélique, who would insist upon knowing what M.
le Comte had said about _her_ night; so that Franceline was compelled
to aggravate her whether she would or not. She “knew her place” better
than to have words with M. le Comte, but she had it out with Franceline.
“Monsieur says he didn’t get to sleep till past two o’clock this morning,
does he? Humph! I only wish I had slept half as well, I know. Pauvre,
cher homme! He drops off the minute his head is on the pillow, and then
dreams that he’s wide awake. That’s how it is. Why, this morning I was up
and lighted my candle at ten minutes to two, and he was sleeping as sound
as a wooden shoe! I heard him.” Franceline would soothe her by saying she
quite believed her; but as she said the same thing to M. le Comte, and
as Angélique generally overheard her saying so, this seeming credulity
only aggravated her the more. Laterly Raymond had taken up a small
celestial globe to his room, for the purpose, he said, of utilizing his
long vigils by studying the face of the heavens during the clear, starry
nights; and he would give the result of his nocturnal contemplations
to Franceline at breakfast next morning--Angélique being either in the
room pouring out the hot milk for her master’s coffee, or in the kitchen
with the door ajar, so that she had the benefit of the conversation.
The pantomimes that were performed at these times were a severe trial
to Franceline’s gravity: Angélique would stand behind Raymond’s chair,
holding up her hands aghast or stuffing her apron into her mouth, so as
not to explode in disrespectful laughter. Sometimes she would shake her
flaps at him with an air of despondency too deep for words, and then walk
out of the room.
“I heard M. le Comte telling mam’selle that he saw the Three Kings (the
popular name for Orion’s belt in French) shining so bright this morning
at three o’clock. I believe you; he saw them in his sleep! I was up and
walking about my room at that hour, and it so happened that I opened my
door to let in the air _just_ as the clock in the _salon_ was striking
three!”
As ill-luck would have it, Raymond overheard this confidential comment
which Angélique was making to Franceline under the porch, not seeing that
the sitting-room window was open.
“My good Angélique,” said the count, putting his head out of the window,
“you must have opened the door two seconds too late; it was striking
five, most likely, and you only heard the last three strokes. I suspect
you were sound asleep at the hour I was looking at the Three Kings.”
“La! as if I were an infant not to know when I wake and when I sleep!”
said Angélique with a shrug. “It was M. le Comte that was asleep and
dreaming that he saw the Three Kings.”
“Nay, but I lighted my candle; it was pitch-dark when I got up to set the
globe,” argued M. de la Bourbonais.
“When M. le Comte _dreamt_ that he got up and lighted his candle,”
corrected the incorrigible sceptic. Raymond laughed and gave it up. But
it was true, notwithstanding Angélique’s obstinate incredulity, that he
did pass many white nights now, and the wakefulness was insensibly and
imperceptibly telling on his health. It was a curious fact, too, that
the more the want of sleep was injuring him, the less he was conscious
of suffering from it. He had been passionately fond of astronomy in his
youth, and he had resumed the long-neglected study with something of
youthful zest, enjoying the observation of the starry constellations in
the bright midnight silence with a sense of repose and communion with
those brilliant, far-off worlds that surprised and delighted himself.
Perhaps the feeling that he was now cut off from possible communion with
his fellow-men threw him more on nature for companionship, urging him to
seek on her glorious brow for the smiles that human faces denied him, and
to accept her loving fellowship in lieu of the sympathy that his brothers
refused him.
But rich and inexhaustible as the treasures of the great mother are,
they are at best but a compensation; nothing but human love and human
intercourse can satisfy the cravings of a human heart. Raymond was
beginning to realize this. His forced isolation was becoming poignantly
oppressive to him. He longed to see Sir Simon, to hear his voice, to
feel the warm clasp of his hand; he longed, above all, to get back his
old feeling of gratitude to him. Raymond little suspected what a moral
benefactor his light-hearted, worldly-minded friend had been to him all
those years when he was perpetually offering services that were so seldom
accepted. Sir Simon was all the time feeding his heart with the milk of
human kindness, making a bond between the proud, poor brother and the
rest of the rich and happy brotherhood who were strangers to him. Raymond
loved them all for the sake of this one. Nothing nourishes our hearts
like gratitude. It widens our space for love, and enlarges our capacity
for kindness; it creates a want in us to send the same happy thrills
through other hearts that are stirring our own. We overflow with love
to all in thankfulness for the love of one. This is often our only way
of giving thanks, and the good it does us is sometimes a more abiding
gain than the service that has called it forth. It was all this that
Raymond missed in Sir Simon. In losing his loving sense of gratefulness
he seemed to have lost some vital warmth in his own life. Now that the
source which had fed this gratitude was dried up, all that was tender and
kind and good in him seemed to be running dry or turning to bitterness.
The estrangement of one had estranged him from all; he was at war with
all humanity. Would any sacrifice of pride be too great to win back
the old sweet life, with its trust, and ready sympathy, and indulgent
kindness? Why should he not write to Sir Simon? He had asked himself
this many times, and had written many letters in imagination, and some
even in reality; but Angélique had found them torn up in the waste-paper
basket next morning, and had been surprised to see the fresh sheets of
note-paper, which she recognized as her master’s, wasted in that manner
and thrown away. He knew what he was doing, probably; it was not for her
to lecture him on such matters, but she could not help setting down the
unnatural extravagance as a part of the general something that was amiss
with her master.
One morning, however, after one of those white nights that gave rise to
so much discussion in the family, Raymond came down with his mind made
up to write a letter and send it. He could stand it no longer; he must
go to his friend and lay bare his heart to him, so that they might come
together again. If Sir Simon’s silence was an offence, Raymond’s was not
free from blame. He sat down and wrote. It was a long letter--several
sheets closely filled. When it was finished, and Raymond was folding it
and putting it into the envelope, he remembered that he did not know
where the baronet was. If he sent it to the Court, the servants would
recognize the handwriting and think it odd his addressing a letter there
in their master’s absence. He thought of forwarding it to Sir Simon’s
bankers; but then, again, how did matters stand at present between him
and them? He might have gone abroad and not left them his address, and
the letter might remain there indefinitely. While Raymond was debating
what he should do he closed up and stamped the blank envelope, making it
ready to be addressed; then he laid it on the top of his writing desk,
and wrote a few lines to the bankers, requesting them to forward Sir
Simon’s address, if they had it or could inform him how a letter would
reach him.
He seemed relieved when this was done, and, for the first time for nearly
a month, called Franceline to come and write for him. She did so for a
couple of hours, and noticed with thankfulness that her father was in
very good, almost in high, spirits, laughing and talking a great deal, as
if elated by some inward purpose. Her glad surprise was increased when he
said abruptly:
“Now, my little one, run and put on thy bonnet, and we will go for a walk
in the park together.”
The day was cold, and there was a sharp wind blowing; but the sun was
very bright, and the park looked green and fresh and beautiful as they
entered it, she leaning on him with a fond little movement from time to
time and an exclamation of pleasure. He smiled on her very tenderly,
and chatted about all sorts of things as in the old days of a month ago
before the strange cloud had drawn a curtain between their lives. He
talked with great animation of his work, and the excitement it would be
to them both when it was published.
“We shall go to Paris for the publication, and then I will show thee the
wonderful sights of the great city: the Louvre, and the Museum of Cluny,
and many antiquities that will interest thee mightily; and we will go to
some fine _modiste_ and get thee a smart French bonnet, and thou wilt be
quite a little _élégante_!”
“Oh! how nice it will be, petit père,” cried Franceline, squeezing his
arm in childish glee; “and many learned men will be coming to see you,
will they not, and writing articles in praise of your great work?”
“Ha! Praise! I know not if it will all be praise,” said the author, with
a dubious smile. “Some will not approve of my views on certain historical
pets. I have torn the masks off many _soi-disant_ heroes, and replaced
others in the position that bigotry or ignorance has hitherto denied
them. I wonder what Simon will say to it all?”
Raymond smiled complacently as he said this. It was the first time he had
mentioned the baronet. Franceline felt as if a load were lifted off her,
and that all the mists were clearing away.
“He is sure to be delighted with it!” she exclaimed. “He always is,
even when he quarrels with you, petit père. I think he quarrels for the
pleasure of it; and then he is so proud of you!”
They walked as far as the house, and then Raymond said it was time to
turn back; it was too cold for Franceline to stay out more than half an
hour.
An event had taken place at The Lilies in their absence. The postman had
been there and had brought a letter. Raymond started when Angélique met
him at the door with this announcement, adding that she had left it on
the chimney-piece.
He went straight in and opened it. It was from Sir Simon. After
explaining in two lines how Clide de Winton had arrived in time to save
him at the last hour, the writer turned at once to Raymond’s troubles.
Nothing could be gentler than the way he approached the delicate
subject. “Why should we be estranged from one another, Raymond? Do you
suppose I suspect you? And what if I did? I defy even that to part us.
The friendship that can change was never genuine; ours can know no
change. I have tried in every possible way to account satisfactorily
for your strange, your suicidal behavior on that night, and I have
not succeeded. I can only conclude that you were beside yourself with
anxiety, and over-excited, and incapable of measuring the effect of your
refusal and your conduct altogether. But admitting, for argument’s sake,
that you did take it; what then? There is such a thing as momentary
insanity from despair, as the delirium of a sick and fevered heart.
At such moments the noblest men have been driven to commit acts that
would be criminal if they were not mad. It would ill become _me_ to
cast a stone at _you_--I, who have been no better than a swindler these
twenty years past! Raymond, there can be no true friendship without
full confidence. We may give our confidence sometimes without our love
following; but when we give our love, our confidence must of necessity
follow. When we have once given the key of our heart to a friend, we have
given him the right to enter into it at all times, to read its secrets,
to open every door, even that, and above that, behind which the skeleton
stands concealed. You and I gave each other this right when we were boys,
Raymond; we have used it loyally one towards the other ever since, and I
have done nothing to forfeit the privilege now. All things are arranged
by an overruling Providence, and God is wise as he is merciful; yet I
cannot forbear asking how it is that I should have been saved from
myself, and that you should not have been delivered from temptation--you,
whose life has been one long triumph of virtue over adversity! It will be
all made square one day; meantime, I bless God that the weaker brother
has been mercifully dealt with and permitted to rescue the nobler and the
worthier one. The moment I hear from you I will come to Dullerton, and
you and Franceline must come away with me to the south. I will explain
when we meet why this letter has been so long delayed.” Then came a
postscript quite at the bottom of the page: “Send that wretched bauble
to me in a box, addressed to my bankers. Rest assured of one thing: you
shall be cleared before men as you already are before a higher and a more
merciful tribunal.”
Many changes passed over Raymond’s countenance as he read this letter;
but when his eye fell on the postscript, the smile that had hovered
between sadness, tenderness, and scorn subsided into one of almost
saturnine bitterness, and a light gathered in his eyes that was not
goodly to see. But the feelings which these signs betrayed found no other
outward vent. M. de la Bourbonais quietly and deliberately tore up the
letter into very small pieces, and then, instead of throwing them into
the waste-paper basket, he dropped them into the grate. The fire was low;
he took the poker and stirred it to make a blaze, and then watched the
flame catching the bits one by one and consuming them.
“It is fortunate I did not send mine!” was his mental congratulation as
he turned to his desk, intending to feed the dying flame with two more
offerings. But where were they? Raymond pushed about his papers, but
could not find either of the letters. Angélique was called. Had she seen
them?
“Oh! yes; I gave them both to the postman,” she explained, with a nod of
her flaps that implied mystery.
“How both? There was only one to go. The other had no address on it,”
said Raymond.
“I saw it, M. le Comte.” Another mysterious nod.
“And yet you gave it to the postman?”
“Yes. I am a discreet woman, as M. le Comte knows, and he might have
trusted me to keep a quiet tongue in my head; but monsieur knows his own
affairs best,” added Angélique in an aggrieved tone.
“My good Angélique, explain yourself a little more lucidly,” said M. de
la Bourbonais with slight impatience. “What could induce you to give the
postman a letter that had neither name nor address on it?”
“Bless me! I thought M. le Comte did not wish me to know who he was
writing to!”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Raymond, too annoyed to notice the absurdity
of the reply. “But how could the postman take it when he saw it was a
blank envelope?”
“I did not let him see it; I slipped the two with my own hands into the
bag,” said Angélique.
M. de la Bourbonais moved his spectacles, and shrugged his shoulders in
a way that was expressive of anything but gratitude for this zeal. He
hesitated a moment or two, debating what he should do. The only way to
ensure getting back his letter immediately was to go off himself to the
post-office, and claim it before it was taken out to be stamped with
the postmark, when it would be opened in order to be returned to the
writer. There might be no harm in its being opened; the postmaster was
not a French scholar that Raymond knew of, but he might have a friend at
hand who was, and who would be glad to gratify his curiosity, as well as
exhibit his learning, by reading the count’s letter.
Raymond set off at once, so as to prevent this. It was the first time
for some weeks that he had shown himself in or near the town; and if his
mind had not been so full of his errand, he would have been painfully
conscious and shy at finding himself abroad in open daylight in his old
haunts and within the observation of many eyes that knew him. But he did
not give this a thought; he was calculating the chances for and against
his arriving at the post-office before the postman had come back from
his rounds and handed in the out-going letters to be marked, and his
imagination was running on to the wildest conclusions in the event of his
being too late. He walked as if for a wager; not running, but as near to
it as possible. The pace and his intense look of preoccupation attracted
many glances that he would have escaped had he walked on quietly at his
ordinary pace. He was not a minute too soon, however, just coming up
as the postman appeared with his replenished bag. M. de la Bourbonais
hastened to describe the shape and color of his blank envelope, and
to explain how it had come to be where it was, and was most emphatic
in protesting that he did not mean the letter to go, and that he was
prepared to take any steps to prevent its going. There was no need to be
so earnest, about it. The postmaster assured him at once that the letter
would be forthcoming in a moment, and that his word would be quite enough
to identify it and ensure its being returned to him. It seemed an age to
Raymond while the letters were being turned out and sorted, but at last
the man held up the blank envelope, with its queen’s head in the corner,
and exclaimed jubilantly: “Here it is!”
The count seized it with avidity, and hurried away, leaving the
postmaster half-amused, half-mystified, at his excited volubility and
warm expressions of thanks. There was no necessity to rush home at
the same pace that he had rushed out, but Raymond felt like a machine
wound up to a pitch of velocity that must be kept up until the wheel
stopped of its own accord. His hat was drawn over his eyes, and his head
bent like a person walking on mechanically, neither seeing nor hearing
what might be going on around him. He was soon beyond the streets and
shop-windows, and back amidst the fields and hedges. There was a clatter
of horses coming down the road. M. de la Bourbonais saw two gentlemen
on horseback approaching. He recognized them, even in the distance, at
a glance: Sir Ponsonby Anwyll and Mr. Charlton. Raymond’s heart leaped
up to his throat. What would they do? Stop and speak, or cut him dead?
A few seconds would decide. They were close on him now, but showed no
sign of reining in to speak. Ponsonby Anwyll raised his hat in a formal
salutation; Mr. Charlton looked straight before him and rode on. All the
blood in his body seemed to rush at the instant to Raymond’s face. He
put his hand to his forehead and stood to steady himself; then he walked
home, never looking to the right or the left until he reached The Lilies.
Angélique called out from the kitchen window to know if he had made
it right about the letter; but he took no heed of her, only walked in
and went straight up to his room. She heard him close the door. There
certainly was something queer come to him of late. What did he want,
going to shut himself in his bedroom this time of day, and then passing
her without answering?
Franceline was in the study, busy arranging some primroses and wild
violets that she had been gathering under the hedge while her father
was out. A noise as of a body falling heavily to the ground in the room
overhead made her drop the flowers and fly up the stairs. Angélique had
hastened from the kitchen to ask what was the matter; but a loud shriek
rang through the house in answer to her question.
“Angélique, come! O my God! Father! father!”
Raymond was lying prostrate on the floor, insensible, while Franceline
lifted his head in her arms, and kissed him and called to him. “Oh! What
has happened to him? Father! father! speak to me. O my God! is he dead?”
she cried, raising her pale, agonized face to the old servant with a
despairing appeal.
“No! no! Calm thyself! He has but fainted; he is not dead,” said
Angélique, feeling her master’s pulse and heart. “See, put thy hand here
and feel! If he were dead, it would not beat.”
Franceline laid her finger on the pulse. She felt the feeble beat; it
was scarcely perceptible, but she could feel it.
“We must lift him on to the bed,” said Angélique, and she grasped the
slight form of her master with those long, brown arms of hers, and laid
it gently on the bed, Franceline assisting as she might.
“Now, my petite, thou wilt be brave,” said the faithful creature,
forgetting herself in her anxiety to spare and support Franceline. “Thou
wilt stay here and do what is necessary whilst I run and fetch the
doctor.”
She poured some eau-de-cologne into a basin of water, and desired her
to keep bathing her father’s forehead and chafing his hands until she
returned. This, after loosing his cravat and letting in as much air as
possible, was all her experience suggested.
Franceline sat down and did as she was told; but the perfect stillness,
the deathlike immobility of the face and the form, terrified her. She
suspended the bathing to breathe on it, as if her warm breath might bring
back consciousness and prove more potent than the cold water. But Raymond
remained insensible to all. The silence began to oppress Franceline like
a ghastly presence; the cooing of her doves outside sounded like a dirge.
Could this be death? His pulse beat so faintly she hardly knew whether it
was his or the pulse of her own trembling fingers that she felt. A chill
of horror came over her; the first vague dread was gradually shaping
itself in her mind to the most horrible of certainties. If he should
never awake, never speak again, never open those closed eyes on her with
the old tender glance of love that had been as familiar and unfailing as
the sunlight to her! Oh! what a fearful awakening came with this first
realization of that awful possibility. What vain shadows, what trivial
empty things, were those that she had until now called sorrows! What a
joy it would be to take them all back again, and bear them, increased
tenfold in bitterness, to the end of her life, if this great, this real
sorrow might be averted! Franceline dropped on her knees beside the
bed, and, clasping her hands, sent up one of those cries that we all of
us find in our utmost need, when there is only God who can help us: “O
Father! thy will be done. But if it be possible, … if it be possible, …
let this cup pass from me!”
There were steps on the stairs. It was Angélique come back. She had only
been ten minutes away--the longest ten minutes that ever a trembling
heart watched through--but Franceline knew she could not have been to the
doctor’s and back so quickly. “I met M. le Vicaire just at the end of the
lane, and he is gone for the doctor; he was riding, so he will be there
in no time.”
Then she made Franceline go and fetch hot water from the kitchen, and
busied her in many little ways, under pretence of being useful, until Dr.
Blink’s carriage was heard approaching. The medical man was not alone;
Mr. Langrove and Father Henwick accompanied him.
Angélique drew the young girl out of her father’s room, and sent her to
stay with Father Henwick, while the doctor, assisted by Mr. Langrove and
herself, attended to M. de la Bourbonais.
“Oh! what is it? Did the doctor tell you?” she whispered, her dark eyes
preternaturally dilated in their tearless glance, as she raised it to
Father Henwick’s face.
“He could say nothing until he had seen him. Tell me, my dear child, did
your father ever have anything of this sort happen him before?” inquired
Father Henwick, as unconcernedly as he could.
“Never, never that I heard of, unless it may have been when I was too
little to remember,” said Franceline; and then added nervously, “Why?”
“Thank God! It is safe, then, not to be so serious,” was the priest’s
hearty exclamation. “Please God, you will see him all right again soon;
he has been overdoing of late, working too hard, and not taking air or
exercise enough. The blade has been wearing out the sheath--that’s what
it is; but Blink will pull him through with God’s help.”
“Father,” said Franceline, laying both hands on his arm with an
unconscious movement that was very expressive, “do you know it seems to
me as if I were only waking up, only beginning to live now. Everything
has been unreal like a dream until this. Is it a punishment for being so
ungrateful, so rebellious, so blind to the blessings that I had?”
“If it were, my child, punishment with God is only another name for
mercy,” said Father Henwick. “Our best blessings come to us mostly in
the shape of crosses. Perhaps you were not thankful enough for the great
blessing of your father’s love, for his health and his delight in you;
perhaps you let your heart long too much for other things; and if so,
God has been mindful of his foolish little one, and has sent this touch
of fear to teach her to value more the mercies that were vouchsafed to
her, and not to pine for those that were denied. We seldom see things in
their true proportions until the shadow of death falls on them.”
“The shadow of death!” echoed Franceline, her white lips growing still
whiter. “Oh! if it be but the shadow, my life will be too short for
thanksgiving, were I to live to the end of the world.”
“Ha! here they come,” said Father Henwick, opening the study-door as he
heard the doctor’s steps, followed by Mr. Langrove’s, on the stair.
Franceline went forward to meet them; she did not speak, but Dr. Blink
held out his hand in answer to her questioning face, and said cheerfully:
“The count is much better; he has recovered consciousness, and is doing
very nicely, very nicely indeed for the present. Come! there is nothing
to be frightened at, my dear young lady.”
Franceline could not utter a word, not even to murmur “Thank God!” But
the dead weight that had been pressing on her heart was lifted, she
gasped for breath, and then the blessed relief of tears came.
“My poor little thing! My poor Franceline!” said the vicar, leading
her gently to a chair, and smoothing the dark gold hair with paternal
kindness.
“Let her cry; it will do her good,” said Dr. Blink kindly; and then he
turned to speak in a low voice to Father Henwick and Mr. Langrove.
He had concluded, from the incoherent account which Mr. Langrove had
gathered from Angélique, that he should come prepared for a case of
apoplexy, and had brought all that was necessary to afford immediate
relief. He had recourse to bleeding in the first instance, and it had
proved effective. M. de la Bourbonais was, as he said, doing very well
for the present. Consciousness had returned, and he was calm and free
from suffering. Franceline was too inexperienced to understand where the
real danger of the attack lay. She fancied that, since her father had
regained consciousness, there could be nothing much worse than a bad
fainting fit, brought on by fatigue of mind and body, and, now that the
Rubicon was past, he would soon be well, and she would take extra care
of him, so as to prevent a relapse. Her passionate burst of tears soon
calmed down, and she rose up to thank her visitors with that queenly
self-command that formed so striking a part of her character.
“I am very grateful to you for coming so quickly; it was very good of
you,” she said, extending her hand to Dr. Blink: “May I go to him now?”
“No, no, not just yet,” he replied promptly. “I would rather he were left
perfectly quiet for a few hours. We will look in on him later; not that
it is necessary, but we shall be in the neighborhood, and may as well
turn in for a moment.” He wished them good-afternoon, and was gone.
“And how did you happen to come in just at the right moment?” said
Franceline, turning to Father Henwick. “It did not occur to me before how
strange it was. Was it some good angel that told you to come to me, I
wonder?”
“The very thing! You have hit it to a nicety!” said Mr. Langrove. “It was
an angel that did it.”
“Yes,” said Father Henwick, falling into the vicar’s playful vein, “and
the odd thing was that he came riding up to my house on a fat Cumberland
pony! Now, we all know S. Michael has been seen on a white charger, but
this is the first time, to my knowledge, that an angel was ever seen
mounted on a Cumberland pony.”
“Dear Mr. Langrove, how good of you!” said Franceline, with moistened
eyes, and she pressed his hand.
“Had you not better come out with me now for a short walk?” said the
vicar. “I sha’n’t be more than half an hour, and it will do you good.
Come and have early tea at the vicarage, and we will walk home with you
before Blink comes back. What do you say?”
“Oh! I think I had better not go out, I feel so shaken and tired; and
then papa might ask for me, you know. I shall not go near him unless he
does, after what Dr. Blink said.”
“Well, perhaps it is as well for you to keep quiet. Good-by, dear. I will
look in on you this evening.”
“And so will I, my child,” said Father Henwick, laying his broad hand on
her head; and the two gentlemen left the cottage together.
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE FRIENDS OF EDUCATION.
To pass from the discussion of arguments to the question of motives is
a most common yet most unjustifiable manœuvre of popular debate. This
is usually done when the field of calm and logical reasoning has become
tolerably clear. The flank movement is attempted as a final struggle
against defeat otherwise inevitable. If the motive thus impugned be
really indefensible; if it be, at the same time, glaring or manifest, a
positive advantage is sometimes gained by a vigorous diversion from the
real object of contention. But if such a motive has to be alleged--or,
still worse, invented--the demonstration against it, however violent, is
but a reluctant and ungracious acknowledgment of defeat and a flight from
the real point at issue. The most recent instance of this sort is taking
place before the American public, and has been afforded by those who
endeavor to represent Catholics as opposed to free and liberal education,
thereby attainting the motives of the position which Catholics have been
forced to assume with regard to what are falsely called “common” schools.
This attitude of our opponents, however, we regard not without
complacency. Our object is not war, but peace and good-will among
citizens. We hail the present violent misrepresentation as a sign
that the enemy is close to the “last ditch,” and that the discussion
approaches its conclusion. When this final effort to distort the Catholic
object and to asperse the Catholic character has exhausted itself and
been held up to the inspection of the American people, we shall have
seen the end of the “school question.” We insist upon an improvement in
our educational system which is necessary to perfect its character and
to satisfy the requirements of the times. The present system does not
meet the wishes of a very large portion of the community, is unfair to
others besides Catholics, and is out of harmony with the spirit of free
institutions. A system is wanted which shall at least be equal to that of
monarchical countries, fair to all citizens alike, and which will relieve
Catholics from the double burden of educating their own children, besides
paying for a system of education of which they cannot conscientiously
avail themselves.
The correctness of the Catholic position is so manifest, and is so
rapidly gaining the recognition of all thoughtful classes, that those who
are unwilling to allow Catholics equal rights as citizens are forced, in
order to hide the truth, not only to maintain that the present system
is absolutely perfect and incapable of any improvement, but to accuse
Catholics of harboring ideas of which they are not only innocent, but
which it would be wholly impossible for them to entertain--such as
that they are afraid of the light; that they attack the present system
because they are inimical to all education; and that their object is, if
possible, to do away with it altogether. Accusations similar to these
are daily repeated, garnished with rhetoric, and sent forth to alarm our
fellow-citizens and to encourage them to turn a deaf ear to whatever
Catholics may say. The weak point of this movement against us is that
the people will notice that it does not deal at all with the validity
of Catholic claims, and that it shirks the only question at issue. They
will be led to suspect that it is emphatically a “dodge”; and the mere
suspicion of this will awaken curiosity as to what Catholics really have
to say--a curiosity fatal to the success of the flank attack.
In the language of those who advance the charge with which we propose
to deal, education means either primary instruction in the elements of
knowledge, or else higher academic culture, such as is to be furnished
by colleges and universities. If, therefore, Catholics are hostile to
education, in this sense of the word, they must be opposed either to
the general spread of such information as is aimed at in elementary and
normal schools, or to the existence and growth of the higher institutions
of science and art.
We are perfectly aware that there is another meaning given to the word
education, to which reference is made, simply in order to avoid obscurity.
Philosophers of the class to which Mr. Huxley belongs understand by
education a certain specific course of moral and intellectual training,
the aim of which is to ensure its pupils against ever being affected by
“theological tendencies.” Such impressions are to be made upon childhood,
and matured in more advanced stages, as will rid men of that natural
but awkward habit of reasoning from cause to effect; which will free
them from all hope of any life but the present, and any fear of future
responsibility, in order that they may be impelled to devote themselves
solely to the analysis and classification of material phenomena, since
this is the only purpose of man’s existence--such a course of spiritual
defloration as was practised upon the tender and noble genius of the late
John Stuart Mill, the results of which, as manifested by the revelation
of his biography, afford, in the words of an ingenuous, critic, “a most
unpleasant spectacle.” A process of this kind is not education; it is a
heartrending and lamentable destruction of that which is noblest and
most essential in man, and as a definition has not yet obtained a place
in the English language.
If any of our readers would care to know our own ultimate definition
of education, we should describe it as the complete and harmonious
development of all the powers of man in reference to his true end. But
for present purposes it is sufficient to adopt the ordinary sense of the
word, as meaning the diffusion of knowledge by scholastic exercises in
academies and colleges.
If it appears singular to enlightened Protestants to hear a demand for
circumscription and discouragement of Catholics, and, if possible, the
suppression of religious education, from that faction whose motto is
“Liberty and Light,” we trust that it will seem none the less paradoxical
to hear the charge of favoring ignorance urged with most vehemence
against us by those whose boast, up to within a few years, has been “a
ministry without education, and a way to heaven without grammar.”
The first demand does not in the least surprise us, coming, as it does,
from a crude and undigested assumption of the principles of European
radicalism. We have seen its consistency illustrated by madmen chasing,
robbing, and killing one another to the cry of “liberty, equality,
fraternity.” We understand what it is to be assaulted by this party,
which knows not how to act except in the way of destruction, which is
never at rest except in the midst of agitation, and never at peace, so to
speak, except when at war.
Nor is it strange to see an attempt against Catholics made outside the
field of theological controversy, inasmuch as the result of controversy
for the past two centuries has tended rather to the disintegration of
Protestantism than to the conversion of Catholics to the new faith. Nor
is it surprising to find this assault directed against the equal rights
of Catholics in education; for here some earnest but short-sighted men
imagine that there is not simply ground to be gained, but that the
present system is a stronghold not to be given up. It is a stronghold,
truly, but rather of infidelity than of Protestantism.
But educated Protestants and heathen will marvel with us that the attack
has been made on the theory that Protestantism is the born friend, and
Catholicity the natural enemy of education, knowing as well as we the
fatal evidence of history.
The contempt for education which, until more recent times, has always
existed, to a certain extent, among the orthodox Protestants, was founded
upon their erroneous doctrines of the total depravity of human nature,
the consequent invalidity of human reason, and the principle of private
illumination.
When Luther said, “The god Moloch, to whom the Jews immolated their
children, is to-day represented by the universities” (_Wider den
Missbrauch der Messe_), it was not simply on the ground of the
universities being centres of association for boisterous and disorderly
youth, or fortresses of the ancient faith, but because of that “pagan and
impious science” which was taught in them.
In his furious onslaught against them Luther was sustained by his
well-known hatred of anything which tended to assert the prerogatives
of human nature or the dignity of reason. No man was ever more
intemperate in denunciation than this so-called “liberator of humanity
and emancipator of human reason.” “True believers strangle reason,” said
he; and he never alluded to it except in terms of most outrageous abuse.
The last sermon of his at Wittenberg[253] is monumental in this respect;
and his well-known reply to the Anabaptists is one of the most startling
examples of his intensely idiomatic style.[254]
The feelings of the master were fully communicated to the disciples. The
results were fearful. The free schools which existed in every city were
overturned by the very men whom they had educated; the _gymnasia_ were in
many places wholly destroyed, in others so reduced as never to recover
their former position.
At Wittenberg itself the two preachers, Spohr and Gabriel Didymus,
announced from the pulpit that the study of science was not simply
useless but noxious, and that it was best to do away with the colleges
and schools. The upshot was to change the academy of that city into a
bakery. Similar measures were carried into effect throughout the entire
duchy of Anspach. The history of the Reformation by Dr. Döllinger gives a
long list of the numerous scholars, rectors of high schools and colleges,
who were driven into exile, and also details a minute account of many of
the institutions which were destroyed.
The statements of Erasmus, as to the disastrous results of the
Reformation on studies, are constant and numberless. They may
be formulated in a sentence of one of his letters to Pirkheimer
(1538): “_Ubicumque regnat Lutheranismus, ibi litterarum est
interitus_”--“Wherever Lutheranism reigns, there is the destruction of
letters.”
The testimony of Sturm, Schickfuss, Bucer, and others is no less
forcible. Luther and Melancthon in later days seem to have been appalled
by their own work, and George Major thus sums up the melancholy condition
of things in his own day: “Thanks to the wickedness of men and the
contempt which we ourselves have shown for studies, the schools have more
than ever need of patrons and protectors to save them from ruin, and to
prevent us from falling into a state of barbarism worse than that of
Turks and Muscovites.”
The interesting works of the Benedictines of St. Maur of the XVIIIth
century, the Bollandists, and the collections of a few other Catholic
scholars have preserved nearly all the material that is left from which
to construct the history of the middle ages, so thorough was the work
of destruction done on libraries by the Calvinists and Huguenots. The
Bodleian library is but a fragment--a few torn leaves of the literature
which was weeded out of England by the enlightened zeal of the
much-married father of Anglicanism.
“What mad work this Dr. Coxe did in Oxon, while he sat chancellor, by
being the chief man that worked a reformation there, I have elsewhere
told you,” says Anthony Wood “To return at length to the royal delegates,
some of whom yet remained in Oxford, doing such things as did not
at all become those who professed to be learned and Christian men.
For the principal ornaments, and at the same time supports, of the
university--that is, the libraries, filled with innumerable works, both
native and foreign--they permitted or directed to be despoiled.… Works
of scholastic theology were sold off among those exercising the lowest
description of arts; and those which contained circles or diagrams it
was thought good to mutilate or burn, as containing certain proof of the
magical nature of their contents.”
What was left undone by the royal delegates was thoroughly attended to by
the Puritans, who never did their work by halves, and whose views with
regard to the Bible and literature bore a close resemblance to those of
the early Mohammedans in their comparative estimate of the Koran and
secular writings.
For a full account of the effect of the revolution of the XVIth century
on learning, people who may suspect Catholic writers of exaggeration can
compare their statements with those of the learned Protestant Huber, in
his exhaustive history of the universities. Even “honest Latimer,” who
certainly was not a zealot for profane learning, lifted up his voice in
complaint: “It would pity a man’s heart to hear that that I hear of the
state of Cambridge; what it is in Oxford I cannot tell.” How it was at
Oxford we have already seen. Throughout the length and breadth of the
land the monastic schools, which were asylums both of mercy and learning,
were destroyed; the mere list of their names, as given by the Protestant
historian Cobbett, occupies one hundred and forty-five pages of his
work. The present condition of the lower classes in England, which is
due to their being thus deprived of means of education and assistance
in distress, is the Nemesis of the Reformation. In listening to the
demand that the government shall dispossess the present landlords as
it despoiled the churchmen of old, we hear arguments of fearful power
as to the extent of eminent domain. When it is asked why the crown and
people shall not exercise for the common good the prerogative which was
conceded and exercised formerly for the benefit of the crown alone, the
present holders of property acquired by sacrilege may well take alarm
at the progress of revolutionary ideas. And the question as to how far
the people were forcibly deprived of the benefits of a trust vested for
them in the church, may be decided “without constitutional authority and
through blood.” God avert such a calamity from England! May the prayers
of Catholic martyrs, of More and Fisher, intercede in her behalf, and
save her from the consequences of that act, to prevent which, these,
her truest sons, did not hesitate to offer up their lives! However,
with these facts in view, it is scarcely wise for English Protestantism
to assume the position of a necessary and perpetual friend of popular
education. It is best to wait until the ink has become dry which has
scored from the statute book of that realm the law making it felony to
teach the alphabet to Catholics.
It would be gratifying to us to contrast with the conduct of the authors
of Protestantism that of the great educators of Europe who laid the
foundations of our civilization. A fierce and violent revolution has
turned that civilization aside, and introduced into it principles of
anarchy and death. A shallow and ungrateful era has failed to perceive
and to acknowledge its debts. It is only in the pages of scholars such
as Montalembert, the Protestants Maitland and Huber, and the author of
that recent modest but most charming book entitled _Christian Schools and
Scholars_, that we begin to notice a thoughtful inquiry into the history
of our intellectual development. The masters slumber in forgetfulness
and oblivion. We know not the builders of the great structures of the
middle ages; and people generally know almost as little of its great
intellectual and social system. The history of the human race for a
thousand years of most intense activity is summed up in a few unmeaning
words.
Time and space fail for such a comparison. But the fact that the first
Protestants found themselves educated, the fact that they found schools
to denounce and to destroy, in the XVIth century, is sufficient to
justify us with regard to history prior to that date.
It would also be a pleasure to describe the progress of those magnificent
bodies of Catholic educators which rose, under divine inspiration, as a
check to the wave of revolution, and whose successes first stimulated
the action of Protestants by the wholesome influence of fear. But this
also is beyond our compass. We are ready to discuss the charge that
Catholics are opposed to education, independently of all reference to
Protestantism, by the test of positive facts, and to stand or fall by the
Catholic record in modern times.
It is not necessary to cross the ocean or to visit countries where the
munificence of ages has endowed the universities of Catholic lands; as,
for instance, the seven great universities of the Papal States--Ferrara,
Bologna, Urbino, Macerata, Camerino, Perugia, and Rome, each containing
thousands of students. Nor is it necessary to remind the reader that
the great Protestant universities, and notably those of England, are,
to use the expression of a distinguished Anglican prelate, “a legacy
of Catholicism.” The charge that Catholics are opposed to university
education is simply laughable, considering that the university is
essentially a Catholic idea, and has never, even in Europe, been
successfully counterfeited.
It is not necessary, although it may be instructive, to refer to the
free schools of the city of Rome, which, according to the testimony of
a Protestant traveller, thirty years ago surpassed even those of Berlin
in efficiency and relative number. They were, before the recent seizure
by the Piedmontese government, the most numerous in proportion to the
population and the most varied in character of any city in the world.
They presented to their scholars the choice of day or night with regard
to time, and prepared them for every profession, art, and trade. This
matchless variety was doubtless the result of centuries of growth; but it
was also the spontaneous outcome of zeal for education, and laid not a
penny of taxation upon the people. So high was the standard of gratuitous
education that private schools, at the beginning of the reign of our Holy
Father Pius IX., had to struggle hard in order to retain the patronage
of the wealthy classes. At that time there were in Rome 27 institutions
and 387 schools for free education. Of these last, 180 were for little
children of both sexes. Of the remainder, 94 were devoted to males and
113 to females. The total number of pupils in elementary schools amounted
to 14,157, of which number 3,790 were of the infant class. Of those more
advanced, 5,544 were males and 4,823 females. In elementary schools,
_purely gratuitous_, 7,579 received education--viz., 3,952 boys and 3,627
girls.
There appears, however, in Cardinal Morichini’s report, a feature which
has never yet been introduced into the American system--to wit, in
_schools paying a small pension_ there were 1,592 boys and 1,196 girls;
making a total in such schools of 2,788. This last item may furnish a
hint to those who are anxious to secure the attendance of poor children
in our own schools; although it is scarcely practicable where common
education has to be provided by taxation alone. Of these 387 schools to
which we have referred, 26 belonged to religious communities of men,
and 23 to religious communities of women. The rest belonged to, or were
conducted by, seculars. Besides these, 2,213 children of both sexes
received free instruction in special conservatories.
In addition to this system of free primary education, there was the vast
system of colleges and academies connected with the university, the
advantages of which were at the command of the most limited and humble
means.
It would be interesting to ask some of the high-school graduates in this
country the simple historical question, “Who, in modern times; have done
most for free education?” General Grant has doubtlessly contributed
liberally towards it; so, it is to be presumed, has Mr. Blaine; so have
many other distinguished lecturers on the subject of education. But
if the question is rightly answered, the date will have to be assigned
much earlier, and St. Joseph Calasanctius, Venerable de la Salle,
Catherine McAuley, and a hundred thousand other “Papists” will have to
take precedence of our illustrious fellow-citizens. The spectacle of
one Christian Brother, or Ursuline Nun, or Sister of Mercy whose life
is devoted to the instruction of the poor, with no recompense but the
sweet privilege of being worn out in the service of fellow-men for the
sake of Jesus Christ--such a spectacle as was afforded by the gifted
Gerald Griffin, or by Mother Seton in our own country, and is daily shown
among us by thousands of calm, intelligent men and amiable women, in the
various religious orders--this is a testimony to education which none but
Catholics can produce. And yet these men and women, these bright martyrs
of charity, are they whom it is thought good to attack by every means
within the reach of calumny.
Let it be understood that we do not overlook the efforts made by
noble men and women in the ranks of Protestantism. Though few, and
insignificant in intensity of zeal when compared with the daily and
common sacrifices made by Catholics, nevertheless it must be borne in
mind that these isolated attempts have been ineffectual, save only in
so far as they have produced imperfect copies of the great works of
Catholicity. Protestantism, as such, has never prompted or organized
any great attempt at general free primary education. Indeed, it might
be safely challenged to produce any instance of the kind. And if the
American people to-day were to be seized with remorse for its injustice
towards Catholics, and to propose immediately to do away with all public
schools, we should object most strongly on the ground that no adequate
means would then exist for the education of Protestant children. The
problem of general education has never been faced by Protestantism. The
system of godless education is an extremely modern and thoroughly pagan
idea. If it has found favor among the leaders of Protestantism, this
has been because they have accepted it as a solution of the educational
problem; not having given the matter sufficient attention to observe the
ruinous effect which it is producing on themselves.
From similar thoughtlessness comes their maintenance of the present
system. It is a comparatively cheap solution, as far as individuals are
concerned. It calls for no sacrifices. It is supposed to be sufficiently
Protestant as long as the Bible is read in the schools. But if the
present movement of the infidel party succeeds, and the “common” schools
are reduced to purely irreligious institutions, the matter will soon
force itself upon Protestant attention. We are convinced that they will
perceive that Catholics have given the subject much more consideration
than they supposed, and have been right throughout. Many of them will
regret having misunderstood our views, and will be prepared to endorse
the proposition that such schools are subversive of Christianity and
demoralizing in their tendency. They will then endeavor to repair the
evils which may still result from their ill-judged neglect of Catholic
remonstrance. They will demand to be put upon at least an equal footing
with infidels, probably with as much vehemence as Catholics have
demanded an equal footing for all citizens alike. If they find themselves
hopelessly debarred from this by the radical changes in the constitution
which some of their number are even now proposing, they will impeach
these amendments. This failing, they will find themselves in the position
in which Catholics now are. Then, for the first time in history, will
Protestantism have a fair chance to show how much it cares for education.
But, as already intimated, it is not necessary to cross the seas to
discover testimony in rebuttal of the gratuitous slander which is urged
against Catholics. Nor is there need to summon from the tomb the teachers
of those who founded the so-called Reformation, nor to institute an
historic comparison between the labors of Catholics and Protestants.
Still less need is there to attempt to penetrate the future as to what
Catholics may do for education when they are relieved of one-half of
their present twofold burden.
We live in the XIXth century and in America; and in this, very age and
country Catholics are doing more for education than is actually done
by any other denomination, and, in proportion to their numbers and
means, more than is done by all other denominations put together, which
outnumber Catholics by at least four to one--Catholics, forsooth, who are
impudently charged with being opposed to primary schools and collegiate
training!
This assertion will doubtless sound strangely in the ears of those who
have allowed themselves to remain in ignorance of the facts which we
shall presently adduce. But, in view of them, it will be acknowledged
that our statement is the most modest that can be made, and that, if
disposed to be boastful, we could increase it many fold without fear
of exaggeration. Catholics in this country have, it is true, no great
university such as those produced by the efforts and endowments of
generations. Besides the lack of time necessary for such a development,
two other causes have thus far prevented its origin. The first is the
poverty of Catholics here--not simply their lack of means--but the fact
that the extent of the country and the comparatively small number of very
wealthy families require that educational institutions of the higher
class should be plentifully distributed. Secondly, Catholic resources
have actually been applied to satisfy this condition of things. We
feel quite sanguine that, before the close of the century, in spite of
all disadvantages, a Catholic university of the very highest character
will be established here; but, without it, there exist at present, in
every city of importance throughout the Union, colleges which, for
scholarship, will fairly compete with the chartered universities of this
country, and which, in certain localities and in special departments,
will surpass their older and more pretentious rivals. Although these
colleges do not approach the ideal of a university--_i.e._, a great
city of learning, which can no more be built in a day than a great
commercial metropolis--nevertheless there is no reason to be ashamed of
our colleges. Scarcely one of them can be found which does not contain
the children of non-Catholics, sent thither by the preference of parents
and guardians. Our great academies for young ladies are recognized as
possessing advantages which are without a parallel; and, as a class, the
convent schools for girls are without even a rival, and contain a very
large proportion of Protestant children.
Nor are Catholics lacking in efforts to provide primary education for
Catholic children, although their efforts in this direction are sadly out
of proportion to their necessities. In higher intellectual culture the
wealthy are naturally interested. They must provide suitable education
for their children. To do this in every place is a most severe tax upon
them. Nevertheless, it has been their duty to accomplish this, and,
at the same time, to subscribe liberally toward the education of the
children of their poorer brethren.
The poorer classes, also, with less natural impulse to make sacrifices
for education, exposed to the temptation of hundreds of proselytizing
institutions, forced to pay also for the lavish expenditure of the
public schools, have had to bear the burden of procuring the necessary
instruction for their children without exposing them to sectarianism and
the scorn of their religion too often openly manifested in the “common”
schools. How far they have done their duty will presently be shown.
Honorable men shall judge whether they have or have not valued education.
But if it be suddenly discovered that they have valued it, let it be
acknowledged also that they have acted as Catholics and from the deepest
religious motives.
The general statistics of the Catholic Church in America are very
imperfect. Nevertheless, from the _Catholic Directory_ of 1875 a few
figures may be gleaned which will abundantly sustain the statements here
advanced. It is to be regretted that the statistics as given in the
_Directory_ are not more complete, those of some dioceses being quite
minute and exact, those of others very imperfect.
With regard to colleges and academies for higher education, there are,
under Catholic direction, in the United States, at least 540, with an
attendance of not less than 48,000 pupils. In dioceses of which both
the numbers of institutions and their attendance have been given there
are 270 institutions, with an attendance of 24,000. A mathematical
computation gives for the attendance in the others the amount which we
have allowed as a safe estimate--viz., a total attendance of no less than
48,000 souls. How does this appear to those who have listened hitherto
to the revilers of Catholics? Are we right in repelling their charge, or
are they right, who have nothing but their angry feelings with which to
sustain it?
If Catholics are wanting in zeal for education, the spirit of obstruction
is not apparent in their higher institutions. But, as we have said,
the mass of our people are poor. What provision have they made for
themselves, besides paying for the education of others?
The Catholic parochial schools are principally designed to supply the
need of Catholic education for the masses. It would be wrong, however, to
consider them as merely primary schools. Many of the parochial schools
are really high schools, and have a course of studies equal to the best
normal schools. Nevertheless, under the head of parish schools are not
included any of those already mentioned as colleges or academies. In
the Archdiocese of Cincinnati there are 140 parish schools, in which
are educated about 35,000 children free of cost to the State. In the
Archdiocese of New York there are 93 parish schools, with not less than
37,600 children. In the Diocese of Cleveland there are 100 parish schools
and 16,000 children. In some places the attendance of the Catholic
schools is fully equal to that of the public schools. So that in these
districts Catholics not only pay for the education of their own children,
but half the expenses of the public schools, and--supposing both systems
to be conducted with equal economy--enough to pay for the education
of all the other children as well as their own, _free of cost_ to
Protestants, Jews, and infidels. And yet Catholics are charged with being
hostile to education!
In the United States we have statistics of 1,400 parochial schools, the
given attendance at which amounts to 320,000 pupils. The entire number of
parish schools foots up 1,700, and the total figure of attendance may be
set down at 400,000 scholars. Add to this the number of 48,000 who are
being educated in colleges and academies, and farther increase the sum by
the probable number of children in asylums, reformatories, and industrial
schools, and there will appear something very like half a million of
scholars who are receiving their education at the expense of Catholics.
Taking into account Catholic numbers, Catholic means, and the time in
which Catholics have made these provisions for education, we can safely
challenge, not only every denomination singly, but all of them put
together, to show any corresponding interest in the matter of education,
whether elementary or scientific. This challenge is made, not in the
spirit of pride (though certainly without shame), but in the name of
truth and of generous rivalry to outstrip all others in the service
of humanity and our country. Let it stand as the fittest reply to the
disingenuous charge that Catholics are opposed to education.
The candid reader to whom these facts are new will use his own language
in characterizing the “flank movement” against Catholics, and will
be disposed to credit us with honesty and consistency in our open
criticism of the present hastily-adopted system of education. But we
are persuaded that he will also be led, if not to make, at least to
concur in, farther reflections on the facts which are here adduced. If
Catholics are actually providing instruction for so vast a number of the
people of the United States, is not this a very considerable saving to
the public? We think it is. The average cost of education in New York
City is $13 60 per child; in the State of New York, $11; in the United
States and Territories, $9 26. The saving represented by such a number
in our schools amounts, at the rate of New York City, to $6,800,000;
at the rate of the State of New York, to $5,500,000, and at the lowest
rate, to $4,630,000 per annum. In addition to this direct saving, we must
be credited with the amount of our taxes for the public schools. When
Catholics stand before the American people, and state the reasons why
they do not consider the present educational system that prevails here to
be either wise or just, they are not beggars in any sense. They ask for
no favor. They demand an equitable system of disbursing the funds raised
for education, so that no class of citizens shall be deprived of that for
which they are forced to contribute. They would arrange it so that none
could justly complain. As Catholics, we must have religion and morality
(which, whatever others may think, are to us inseparable) taught in the
schools to which we send our children. No time or place will ever alter
our convictions on this point. What we demand for ourselves we gladly
concede to others. We are ready to consult with them on a common and just
basis of agreement. Nothing is wanting for a harmonious settlement except
fairness on the part of our opponents. There is no flaw in our position,
no evil design in our heart, nor have we the slightest disposition to
drive a close bargain. Let the word be spoken. Let any of the Protestant
denominations make a step forward, intimate a desire for settlement on
the basis of equal justice to all, and Catholics are with them. But while
we thus maintain our demand as strictly just, whether it be received or
rejected, we are not debtors but creditors of the state. We not only ask
our fellow-citizens, Will you stand by and see us taxed for a system of
education of which we cannot conscientiously avail ourselves? but we
further ask, Can you, as honest men, disregard what Catholics are doing
for education? Do you want them not only to educate their own children,
thereby saving you this cost, but to educate yours also?
What kind of a soul has the man or the nation who would deliberately
resist such an appeal? The time will come when people will ask--as,
indeed, many do ask at present--“Why is not a louder outcry made for
the Catholics in the school question?” And the answer is that we feel
a certainty, which nothing can shake, that the American people are
intelligent enough to understand Catholics after a time; and when they
do understand them, they will be fair enough to do them justice.
In the meantime let the Catholic laborer pay not only for the education
of his own children at the parish school, and save this expense to
his rich neighbor; let him also pay for the same neighbor’s children,
not merely in primary schools, but in high schools, where ladies and
gentlemen (whom poverty does not drive to labor at the age when the poor
man’s children have to be apprenticed) may learn French and German and
music, and to declaim on the glorious principles of American liberty and
of the Constitution, under which all men are (supposed to be) free and
equal. We love to hear their young voices and hearty eloquence. Let these
institutions be costly in structure and furnished with every improvement.
Let the teachers have high salaries. Let gushing editors issue forth,
to manifest to the astonished world the wisdom and deep thought which
they have acquired at the expense of their humbler and self-sacrificing
neighbor. But let honest and thoughtful men ponder on the meaning of
American equality, and judge who are the true friends of education.
The wages of the laborers will be spent, if the shallowness and crude
imperfection of the present system are learned, and the spirit of equal
rights among citizens peacefully preserved; though the credit will belong
to those who have kept their calmness of mind and made the greatest
sacrifices.
The candid reader to whom we have alluded will readily admit that
Catholics are true friends of education, and are doing most for it
proportionately to their means; that, instead of suspicion and abuse,
they deserve respect, honor, and acknowledgment of their services.
We think, however, that our fellow-citizens will go much farther, and
will, in time, endorse our statement when we affirm that Catholics at
present, and as a body, are the only true friends of popular education.
By this is not meant simply to say that they have not been backward in
obtaining, by their intelligence and integrity, the highest positions in
the country; that they count as representatives such men as Chief-Justice
Taney, Charles O’Conor, a Barry at the head of the navy, a Sheridan and
a Rosecrans in the army, and others of the highest national and local
reputation; or that, when the Roman purple fell upon the shoulders of the
Archbishop of New York, it suffered no loss of dignity in touching a true
and patriotic American, well fitted to wear it in any court or academy
of Europe. But we do mean that, outside of the Catholic Church and those
who sympathize with our views on this subject, there is no body whose
representatives are not biassed in their plan for common education by
prejudice or hostility toward some other body.
With what utter disregard for the rights of conscience the infidel and
atheistic faction coolly avows its purpose to enforce a secular and
irreligious education upon all the people--a system known to be no less
antagonistic to the spirit of our democratic institutions than hostile to
the religious convictions of Catholics as well as Protestants! What loud
outcries and stormy denunciations echo from certain popular pulpits when
this faction demands the expulsion of the Bible from the public schools!
Is any person cool in the midst of this confusion? Is there any class of
citizens which looks to the common good and adheres to the principle of
equal regard for religious rights and education free for all? There are
such persons. There is such a class. Those are they who never shrink from
avowing their principles, and whose principles are always right, in spite
of temporary unpopularity--the representatives of the Catholic Church of
America.
When the excitement of the hour has died away, and the schemes of
politicians to gain power by fastening upon the country a system fatal to
liberty, and radical in its assault upon the spirit of our government,
have met their just fate, then we shall receive the honor due to those
who have defended the country from the danger of adopting partisan
measures aimed against a certain class of citizens.
We hope to live to see the day when there will not be a child in the
whole land capable of instruction who shall not receive a thorough
education, fitting him to be a patriotic citizen of our country, and,
at the same time, in nowise interfering with his religious duties.
The present system signally fails to accomplish this. Those who so
strenuously uphold its organization and attempt to make it compulsory
upon all are hostile to the genius of our institutions and fanatical
in their zeal. That they are not lovers of education is evident from
their own ignorance of facts. That they are in earnest when they charge
Catholics with hostility to education we can scarcely believe; for we
hear from the same lips hints and warnings against Catholic success in
education. We hear also that the Catholic Church is growing, and, unless
something is done to stop her, she will convert all the Protestants
in the country; and, still at other times, that she is an effete and
worn-out thing which cannot live through the century in a free republic.
At one time Catholics are derided as idiots; at another represented
as deep and insidious conspirators. There is scarcely anything which
is not affirmed or denied of them, according as it suits the mood of
their revilers. If our people were cooler and more dispassionate, we
should find all those calumnies answering one another. As it is, we are
constrained to pay them more or less attention, though the nature of the
testimony against us scarcely allows us to take up more than one point at
a time.
If Catholics or Methodists or Episcopalians or Baptists can give a
better and a cheaper education, we see no reason why the state should
interfere with those who choose to avail themselves of it. Let the state
set up any standard it may choose, or make it obligatory; Catholics
will cheerfully come up to it, no matter how high it may be, provided
equal rights are allowed to all. The government has a right to demand
that its voters shall possess knowledge. It has no right to say how or
where they shall acquire knowledge. The government is bound by public
policy to promote education. This is to be done by stimulating in this
department the same activity which has made Americans famous in other
branches of social economy, by encouraging spontaneous action, and not
by an ill-judged system of “protection” of one kind of education against
another, or by creating a state monopoly. Bespeaking candor and due
respect on the part of those who may differ from us, we take our stand on
what we conceive to be the true American ground, and are willing to abide
by the consequences--fair play, universal culture, obligatory knowledge,
non-interference of the state in religion, and free trade in education.
SUGGESTED BY A CASCADE AT LAKE GEORGE.
Not idly could I watch this torrent fall
Hour after hour; not vainly day by day
Visit the spot to meditate and pray.
The charm that holds me in its giant thrall
Has too much of the infinite to pall.
For though, like time, the waters pass away,
They fling a freshness, a baptismal spray,
Which breathes of the Eternal Fount of all.
And so, my God, does thy revealed word,
In living dogma or on sacred page,
Flow to us ever new; though read and heard
Immutably the same from age to age.
And thither Nature sends us to assuage
The higher longings by her voices stirred.
SIR THOMAS MORE.
_A HISTORICAL ROMANCE._
FROM THE FRENCH OF THE PRINCESSE DE CRAON.
V.
Time glides rapidly by, leaving no footprints on the dreary road
over which it has passed, as the wild billows, rolling back into the
fathomless depths whence the tempest has called them forth, leave no
traces behind them. And so passes life--fleeting rapidly, noiselessly
away; while man, weary with striving, tortured by cares and unceasing
anxieties, is born, suffers, weeps, and in a day has withered, and, like
a fragile flower of the field, perishes from the earth.
Wolsey, fallen from the summit of prosperity, continued to experience a
succession of reverses. Unceasingly exposed to the malice of his enemies,
he struggled in vain against their constantly-increasing influence; and
if they failed in bringing about his death, they succeeded, at least,
in poisoning every moment of his existence. Thus, at the time even when
Henry VIII. had sent him a valuable ring as a token of amity, they forced
the king to despoil the wretched man of the valuable possessions which
they pretended to wish restored to him. He received one day from his
master a new assurance of his royal solicitude; the next, his resources
failing, he was obliged, for want of money, to dismiss his old servants
and remain alone in his exile.
Cromwell, with an incredible adroitness, had succeeded by degrees in
disengaging himself from the obligations he owed the cardinal, and
in making the downfall and misfortunes of his master serve to advance
his own interests. He had made numerous friends among the throng of
courtiers surrounding the king, in obtaining from the unhappy Wolsey his
recognition of the distribution which the king had made of his effects,
by adding the sanction of his own seal. After repeated refusals on the
part of the cardinal, he was at last successful in convincing him of
the urgent necessity for making this concession, in order to try, he
said with apparent sincerity, to lessen the animosity and remove the
prejudices they entertained against him. But, in reality, the intention
of Cromwell had been, by that manœuvre, to strip him of his entire
possessions; for the courtiers, being well aware their titles were not
valid under the law, were every moment afraid they might be called on to
surrender the gifts they had received, and consequently desired nothing
so much as to have the cardinal confirm them in their unjust possessions.
It was by means of this monstrous ingratitude that Cromwell purchased the
favor of the court, began to elevate himself near the king in receiving
new dignities and honors, and at length found himself saved from the
fate he had so greatly apprehended at the moment of his benefactor’s
downfall. Of what consequence was Wolsey to him now? Banished from his
archbishopric of York, he was but a broken footstool which Cromwell no
longer cared to remember. He scarcely deigned to employ his new friends
in having Wolsey (reduced to the condition of an invalid) removed from
the miserable abode at Asher to the better situated castle of Richmond;
and later, when the heads of the council, always apprehensive and uneasy
because of his existence, obtained his peremptory exile, he considered
this departure as completely liberating him from every obligation to his
old benefactor.
Events were thus following each other in rapid succession, when, toward
the middle of the day, the door of the king’s cabinet opened, and Sir
Thomas More, in the grand costume of lord chancellor, entered as had been
his custom.
The king turned slightly around on his chair, and fixed upon him a
searching glance, as if he sought to read the inmost soul of More.
The countenance of the chancellor was tranquil, respectful, and assured,
such as it had always been. In vain Henry sought to discover the
indications of fear, the impetuous desires and ambitions which he was
accustomed to excite or contradict in the agitated heart of Wolsey, and
by which, in his turn master of his favorite, of his future, and of his
great talents, he made him pay so dearly for the honors at intervals
heaped upon him.
Nothing of all this could he discover! More seated himself when invited
by the king, and entered upon the discussion of a multitude of affairs
to which he had been devoting himself with unremitting attention day and
night.
“Sire,” he would urge, “this measure will be most useful to your
kingdom; sire, justice, it seems to me, requires you to give such a
decision in that case.”
Never were any other considerations brought to bear nor other demands
made; nothing for himself, nothing for his family, but all for the good
of the state, the interests of the people; silence upon all subjects
his conscience did not oblige him to reveal, though the king perceived
only too clearly the inmost depths of the pure and elevated soul of his
chancellor.
By dazzling this man of rare virtues with a fortune to which a simple
gentleman could never aspire, Henry had hoped to allure him to his own
party and induce him to sustain the divorce bill. Thus, by a monstrous
contradiction, in corrupting him by avarice and ambition, he would have
destroyed the very virtues on which he wished to lean. He perceived with
indignation that all his artifices had been unsuccessful in influencing
a will accustomed to yield only to convictions of duty, and he feared
his ability to move him by any of the indirect and abstract arguments
which he felt and acknowledged to himself were weak and insufficient.
Revolving all these reflections in his mind, the king eagerly opened the
conversation with More, but in a quiet tone and with an air of assumed
indifference.
“Well! Sir Thomas,” he said, “have you reflected on what I asked you?
Do you not find now that my marriage with my brother’s wife was in
opposition to all laws human and divine, and that I cannot do otherwise
than have it pronounced null and void, after being thus advised by so
many learned men, and ecclesiastics also?”
“Sire,” replied More, “I have done what your majesty requested me; but
it occurs to my mind that, in an affair of so much importance, it will
not be sufficient to ask simply the advice of those immediately around
you; for it might be feared that, influenced by the affection they bear
for you, they would not decide as impartially as your majesty would
desire. Perhaps, also, some of them might be afraid of offending you. I
have, therefore, concluded that it would be better for your majesty to
consult advisers who are entirely removed from all such suspicions. That
is why I have endeavored to collect together in this manuscript I have
here the various passages of Holy Scripture bearing on this subject. I
have added also the opinions of S. Augustine and several other fathers
of the church, with whose eminent learning and high authority among the
faithful your majesty is familiar.”
“Ah!” said the king, with a slightly-marked movement of impatience, “that
was right. Leave it there; I will read it.”
Sir Thomas deposited the manuscript on the king’s table.
“My lord chancellor,” he continued, “the House of Commons has taken some
steps toward discharging my debts. What do they think of this in the
city?”
“Sire,” replied More, “I must tell you candidly they complain openly and
loudly. They say if the ministers had not taken care to introduce into
the house members who had received their positions from themselves, the
bill would never have passed; for it is altogether unjust and iniquitous
for Parliament to dispose in this manner of private property. They say
still farther that it has been inserted in the preamble of the bill that
the prosperity of the kingdom under the king’s paternal administration
had induced them to testify their gratitude by discharging his debts.
If this pretext is sincere, it reflects the greatest honor on Cardinal
Wolsey; and if, on the contrary, it is false, it covers his successors
with shame.”
“What!” exclaimed the king, “do they dare express themselves in this
manner?”
“Yes,” replied Sir Thomas; “and I will frankly say to the king that it
would have been far better to have imposed a new tax supported equally by
all than thus to despoil individuals of their patrimony.”
“They are never contented!” exclaimed the king impatiently. “I have
sacrificed Wolsey to their hatred, whom there is no person in the kingdom
now able to replace. This Dr. Gardiner torments me with questions which
are far from satisfactory to his dull comprehension. Everything goes
wrong, unless I take the trouble of managing it myself; while with the
cardinal the slightest suggestion was sufficient. I constantly feel
inclined to recall him! Then we will see what they will say! But no!”
he continued, with an expression of gloomy sullenness, “they gave me no
rest until I had banished him from his archbishopric of York. It was,
they said, the sole means of preventing Parliament from pronouncing his
condemnation. By this time he is doubtless already reconciled; he is so
vain a creature that the three or four words I have said in his favor to
my nobles of the north will have been worth more to him than the homage
and adulation of a court, without which he cannot exist. He is pious now,
they say, occupying himself only with good works and in doing penance
for his many sins of the past. In fact, he is entirely reconciled!
He has already forgotten all that I have done for him! I shall devote
myself, then, to those who now serve me!”
“I doubt very much if your majesty has been correctly informed with
regard to the latter fact,” replied More. “Indeed, I know that the order
compelling him to be entirely removed from your majesty’s presence is the
one that caused him the deepest grief.”
“Ah! More,” interrupted the king very suddenly, as if to take him by
surprise, “you are opposed to my divorce. I have known it perfectly well
for a long time; and these extracts from the fathers of the church to
which you refer me are simply the expression of your own opinions, which
you wish to convey to me in this indirect manner.”
“Sire,” replied More, slightly embarrassed, “I had hoped your majesty
would not force me to give my opinion on a subject of such grave
importance, and one, as I have already explained, on which I possess
neither the authority nor the ability to decide.”
“Ah! well, Sir Thomas,” replied the king in a confident manner, wishing
to discover what effect his words would produce on More, “being entirely
convinced of the justice of my cause, and that nothing can prevent me
from availing myself of it, I am determined, if the pope refuses what
I have a right to demand, to withdraw from the tyrannical yoke of his
authority. I will appoint a patriarch in my kingdom, and the bishops
shall no longer submit to his jurisdiction.”
“A schism!” exclaimed More, “a schism! Dismember the church of Jesus
Christ for a woman!”
And he paused, appalled at what Henry had said and astonished at his own
energetic denunciation.
The king felt, as by a violent shock, all the force of that exclamation,
and, dropping his head on his breast, he remained stupefied, like one who
had just been aroused from a painful and terrible dream.
Just at that moment the cabinet door was thrown violently open, and Lady
Anne Boleyn entered precipitately. She was drowned in tears, and carried
in her arms a hunting spaniel that belonged to the king.
She threw it into the centre of the apartment, evidently in a frightful
rage.
“Here,” she cried, looking at the king--“here is your wretched dog, that
has tried to strangle my favorite bird! You never do anything but try
to annoy me, make me miserable, and cause me all kinds of intolerable
vexations. I have told you already that I did not want that horrid animal
in my chamber.”
In the meantime the dog, which she had thrown on the floor, set up a
lamentable howl.
The king felt deeply humiliated by this ridiculous scene, and especially
on account of the angry familiarity exhibited by Anne Boleyn in presence
of Sir Thomas More; for she either forgot herself in her extreme
excitement and indignation, or she believed her empire so securely
established that she did not hesitate to give these proofs of it. She
continued her complaints and reproaches with increasing haughtiness,
until she was interrupted by Dr. Stephen Gardiner, who came to bring some
newly-arrived despatches to the king.
Henry arose immediately, and, motioning Sir Thomas to open the door,
without saying a word, he took Anne Boleyn by the hand, and, leading her
from the room, ordered her to retire to her own apartment.
He then returned, and, seating himself near the chancellor, concealed, as
far as he was able, his excitement and mortification.
Sir Thomas, still more excited, could not avoid, as they went over the
despatches, indignantly reflecting on the manner in which Anne Boleyn
had treated the king, on his deplorable infatuation, and the terrible
consequences to which that infatuation must inevitably lead.
The king, divining the nature of his reflections, experienced a degree of
humiliation that made him inexpressibly miserable.
“What say these despatches?” he asked, endeavoring to assume composure.
“What does More think of me?” he said to himself--“he so grave, so pious,
so dignified! He despises me!… That silly girl!”
“They give an account of the emperor’s reception of the Earl of
Wiltshire,” answered More. “I will read it aloud, if your majesty wishes.”
“No, no,” said the king, whom the name of Wiltshire confused still more;
“give them to me. I am perfectly familiar with the cipher.” He did not
intend that More should yet be apprised of the base intrigues he had
ordered to be practised at Rome to assist the father of his mistress in
obtaining the divorce.
Having taken the letters, he found the emperor had treated his
ambassador with the utmost contempt, remarking to Wiltshire that he was
an interested party, since he was father of the queen’s rival, and he
would have to inform Henry VIII. that the emperor was not a merchant
to sell the honor of his aunt for three hundred thousand crowns, even
if he proposed to abandon her cause, but, on the contrary, he should
defend it to the last extremity; and after saying this, the emperor had
deliberately turned his back on the ambassador and forbidden him to be
again admitted to his presence.
Henry grew red and white alternately.
“I am, then, the laughing-stock of Europe,” he murmured through his
firmly-set teeth.
Numerous other explanations followed, in which the Earl of Wiltshire
gave an exact and circumstantial account of the offer he had made to the
Holy Father of the treatise composed by Cromwell on the subject of the
divorce, saying that he had brought the author with him, who was prepared
to sustain the opinions advanced against all opposition. He ended by
informing the king that, in spite of his utmost efforts, he had not been
able to prevent the pope from according the emperor a brief forbidding
Henry to celebrate another marriage before the queen’s case had been
entirely decided, and enjoining him to treat her in the meantime as his
legitimate wife.
Wiltshire sent with his letter an especial copy of that document,
adding that he feared the information the Holy Father had received of
the violence exercised by the English universities toward those doctors
who had voted against the divorce, together with the money and promises
distributed among those of France, especially the University of Paris, to
obtain favorable decisions, had not contributed toward influencing him.
The king read and re-read several times all these statements, and was
entirely overwhelmed with indignation and disappointment.
“And why,” he angrily exclaimed, dashing the earl’s letter as far as
possible from him--“why have these flatterers surrounding me always
assured me I would succeed in my undertaking? Why could they not
foresee that it would be impossible? and why have I not found a sincere
friend who might have admonished me? More!” he cried after a moment’s
silence--“More, I am most miserable! What could be more unjust? I am
devoted to Lady Anne Boleyn as my future wife; and now they wish to make
me renounce her. The emperor’s intrigues prevail, and against all laws,
human and divine, they condemn me to eternal celibacy!”
“Ah!” replied Sir Thomas in a firm but sadly respectful manner, “yes, it
is indeed distressing to see your majesty thus voluntarily destroy your
own peace, that of your kingdom, the happiness of your subjects, the
regard for your own honor, so many benefits, in fact, and all for the
foolish love of a girl who possesses neither worth nor reputation.”
“More,” exclaimed the king, “do not speak of her in this manner! She is
young and thoughtless, but in her heart she is devoted to me.”
“That is,” replied More, “she is entirely devoted to the crown; she loves
dearly the honors of royalty, and her pride is doubly flattered.”
“More,” said the king, “I forgive you for speaking thus to me; your
severe morals, your austere virtues, have not permitted you to experience
the torments of love, and that is why,” he added gloomily, “you cannot
comprehend its irresistible impulses and true sentiments.”
“Nothing that is known to one man is unknown to another,” replied More.
“Love, in itself, is a sublime sentiment that comes from God; but, alas!
men drag it in the dust, like all else they touch, and too often mistake
the appearance for the reality. To love anyone, O my king!” continued
More, “is it not to prefer them in all things above yourself, to consider
yourself as nothing, and be willing to sacrifice without regret all that
you would wish to possess?”
“Yes,” said Henry VIII.; “and that is the way I love Anne--more than my
life, more than the entire world!”
“No, no, sire!” exclaimed More, “don’t tell me that. No, don’t say you
love her; say you love the pleasure she affords you, the attractions she
possesses, which have charmed your senses--in a word, acknowledge that
you love yourself in her, and consider well that the day when nature
deprives her of her gifts and graces your memory will no longer represent
her to you but as an insipid image, worthy only of a scornful oblivion!
Ah! if you loved her truly, you would act in a different manner. You
would never have considered aught but her happiness and her interests;
you would blush for her, and you would not be able to endure the thought
of the shame with which you have not hesitated to cover her yourself in
the eyes of all your court!”
“Perhaps,” … replied Henry in a low and altered voice. “But she--she
loves me; I cannot doubt that.”
“She loves the King of England!” replied More excitedly, “but not Henry;
she loves the mighty prince who ignominiously bends his neck beneath the
yoke which she pleases to impose on him. But poor and destitute, her
glance would never have fallen upon you. Proud of her beauty, vain of
her charms, she holds you like a conquered vassal whom she governs by a
gesture or a word. She loves riches, honors and the pleasures with which
you surround her. She is dazzled by the _éclat_ of the high rank you
occupy, and, to attain it, she fears not to purchase it at the price of
your soul and all that you possess. What matters to her the care of your
honor or the love of your subjects? Has she ever said to you: ‘Henry, I
love you, but your duty separates you from me; be great, be virtuous’?
Has she said: ‘Catherine, your wife, is my sovereign, and I recognize no
other’? Do you not hear the voice of your people saying to your children:
‘You shall reign over us’? But what am I saying? No, of course she has
not spoken thus; because she seeks to elevate herself, she thinks of her
own aggrandizement--to see at her feet men whom she would never otherwise
be able to command.”
“What shall I do, then, what shall I do?” cried Henry dolorously.
“Marry Anne Boleyn,” replied Thomas More coolly; “you should do it, since
you have broken off her marriage with the Earl of Northumberland. If not,
send her away from court.”
“I will do it! … No, I will not do it!” he exclaimed, almost in the same
breath. “I shall never be able to do it.”
“That is to say, you never intend to do it,” replied More. “We can always
accomplish what we resolve.”
“No, no,” replied Henry; “we cannot always do what we wish. Everything
conspires against me. Tired of willing, I can make nothing bend to my
will! Of what use is my royal power? To be happy is a thing impossible!”
“Yes, of all things in this life most impossible,” answered More; “and he
who aspires to attain it finds his miseries redoubled at the very moment
he thinks they will terminate. The possession of unlawful pleasures is
poisoned by the remorse that follows in their train; and, frightened by
their insecurity and short duration, we are prevented from enjoying them
in quietness and peace.”
“Then,” cried Henry VIII., stamping his foot violently on the floor, “we
had better be dead.”
“Yes,” replied Thomas More, “and to-morrow perhaps we may be!”
“To-morrow!” repeated the king, as if struck with terror. “No, no, More,
not to-morrow. … I would not be willing now to appear in the presence of
God.”
“Then,” replied More, “how can you expect to live peaceably in a
condition in which you are afraid to die? In a few hours, or at least in
a few years (that is as certain as the light of day which shines this
moment), your life and mine will have to end, leaving nothing more than
regrets for the past and fears for the future.”
“You say truly, More,” replied the king; “but life appears so long to
us, the future so far removed! Is it necessary, then, that we be always
thinking of it and sacrificing our pleasures?… Later--well, we will
change. Will we not have more time then to think of it?”
“Ah!” replied More sadly, “there remains very little time to him who is
always putting off until to-morrow.”
As he heard the last words, the king’s face grew instantly crimson. He
kept More with him, entertaining him with his trials and vexations, and
the night was far advanced before he permitted him to retire.
* * * * *
During four entire days the king remained shut up in his apartment, and
Anne Boleyn vainly attempted to gain admittance.
Meanwhile, a rumor of her downfall spread rapidly through the palace. The
courtiers who were accustomed to attend her _levées_ in greater numbers
and much more scrupulously than those of Queen Catherine, suddenly
discontinued, and on the last occasion scarcely one of them made his
appearance. They also took great care to preserve a frigid reserve and
doubtful politeness, which excited to the last degree her alarm and that
of her ambitious family.
The latter were every moment in dread of the blow that seemed ready to
fall upon them. In this state of gloomy disquiet every circumstance
was anxiously noted and served to excite their apprehensions. They
continually discussed among themselves the arrival of the despatches
from Rome, the nature of which they suspected from the very long time
Sir Thomas More had remained with the king. Then they refreshed their
memories with reflections on the inflexible severity of the lord
chancellor, his old attachment for Queen Catherine--an attachment which
the elevation of More had never interrupted, as they had hoped would be
the case. Finally, the sincerity of his nature and the estimation in
which he was held by the king made them, with great reason, apprehend
the influence of his counsel. Already they found themselves abandoned
by almost all of those upon whose support they had relied. Suffolk,
leagued with them heretofore, in order to secure the downfall of Cardinal
Wolsey, now regarded them in their disgrace as of little consequence to
one so closely related as himself to his majesty by the princess, his
wife. The Duke of Norfolk, justly proud of his birth, his wealth, and his
reputation, could not believe the power with which the influence of his
niece had clothed him in the council by any means bound him to engage
in or compromise himself in her cause. In the meantime they realized
that they would inevitably be compelled to succumb or make a last and
desperate effort, and they resolved with one accord to address themselves
to Cromwell, whose shrewdness and cunning, joined to the motives of
self-interest that could be brought to bear on him, seemed to offer them
a last resort.
Cromwell immediately understood all the benefit he would be likely to
derive from the situation whether he succeeded or failed in the cause
of Anne Boleyn, and determined, according to his own expression, to
“make or unmake.” He wrote to the king, demanding an audience. “He fully
realized,” he wrote, with his characteristic adroitness, “his entire
incapacity for giving advice, but neither his devoted affection nor his
sense of duty would permit him to remain silent when he knew the anxiety
his sovereign was suffering. It might be deemed presumptuous in him
to say it, but he believed all the difficulties embarrassing the king
arose from the timidity of his advisers, who were misled by exterior
appearances or deceived by the opinions of the vulgar.”
The king immediately granted him an audience, although his usual custom
was to remain entirely secluded and alone while laboring under these
violent transports of passion. He hoped that Cromwell might be able to
present his opinions with such ability as would at least be sufficient to
divert him from the wretchedness he experienced.
Cromwell appeared before him with eyes cast down and affecting an air of
sadness and constraint.
“Sire,” he said, as he approached the king, “yesterday, even yesterday,
I was happy--yes, happy in the thought of being permitted to present
myself before your majesty; because it seemed to me I might be able to
offer some consolation for the anxieties you experience by reminding you
that nothing should induce you to pause in your efforts to advance the
interests of the kingdom and the state. But to-day, in appearing before
you, I know not what to say. This morning Lady Boleyn, being informed
that I was to have the happiness of seeing your majesty, sent for me and
charged me with the commission of asking your majesty’s permission for
her to withdraw from court.”
“What!” exclaimed Henry, rising hastily to his feet, “she wishes to leave
me?--she, my only happiness, my only joy? Never!”
“I have found her,” continued Cromwell, seeming not to remark the
painful uneasiness he had aroused in the king’s mind--“I have found her
plunged in a state of indescribable grief. She was almost deprived of
consciousness; her beautiful eyes were weighed down with tears, her long
hair hanging neglected around her shoulders; and her pale, transparent
cheek made her resemble a delicate white rose bowed on its slender stem
before the violence of the tempest. ‘Go, my dear Cromwell,’ she said to
me with a tremulous voice, but sweet as the soft expiring notes of an
æolian lyre--‘go, say to my king, to my lord, I ask his permission to
retire this day to my father’s country-seat. I know that I am surrounded
by enemies, but, while favored by his protection, I have not feared their
malice. But now I feel, and cannot doubt it, I shall become their victim,
since they have succeeded in prejudicing my sovereign against me to such
an extent that he refuses to hear my defence.’”
“What can she be afraid of here?” cried the king. “Who would dare offend
her in my palace?”
“Who will be able to defend her if your majesty abandons her?” replied
Cromwell in a haughty tone, feigning to forget the humble demeanor he had
assumed, and mentally applauding the success of his stratagem. “Has she
not given up all for you? Every day she has wounded by her refusals the
greatest lords of the realm, who have earnestly sued for her heart and
hand; but she has constantly refused to listen to them because of the
love she bears for you--always preferring the uncertain hope of one day
becoming yours to all the brilliant advantages of the wealthiest suitors
she has been urged to accept. But to-day, when her honor is attacked,
when you banish her from your presence, she feels she will not have
the courage to endure near you such wretchedness, and she asks to be
permitted to withdraw from court at once and for ever!”
“For ever?” repeated the king. “Cromwell, has she said that? Have you
heard her right? No, Cromwell, you are mistaken! I know her better than
you.” And he turned on Cromwell a keen, scrutinizing glance.
But nothing could daunt this audacious man.
“She said all I have told you,” replied the hypocrite, with the coolest
assurance, raising his head haughtily. “Would I dare to repeat what I
have not heard? And your majesty can imagine that my devotion has alone
induced me to become the bearer of so painful a message; for I could not
believe, your majesty had ceased to love her.”
“Never!” cried the king. “Never have I for one moment ceased to adore
her! But listen, dear Cromwell, and be convinced of how wretched I am!
Yesterday I received from Rome the most distressing intelligence. I
had written the pope a letter, signed by a great number of lords of my
court and bishops of the kingdom, in which they expressed the fears they
entertained of one day seeing the flames of civil war break out in this
country if I should die without male heirs, as there would be grounds for
contesting the right of my daughter Mary to the throne on the score of
her legitimacy. But nothing can move him.”
* * * * *
Here the king rose, furiously indignant. “He has answered this petition,”
he cried, walking with hurried strides up and down the floor; “and
how?… By my faith, I can scarcely repeat it.… That he pardons the terms
they have used in their letter, attributing them to the affection they
bear for me; that he is under still greater obligations to me than
they have mentioned; that it is not his fault if the affair of the
divorce remains undecided; that he has sent legates to England; that
the queen has refused to recognize them, and appealed from all they
have done; that he has tried vainly in every possible way to terminate
the affair amicably; and, furthermore, ‘You will, perhaps, be ready to
say,’ he writes, ‘that, being under so many obligations to the king as
I am, I should waive all other considerations and accord him absolutely
everything he asks.’ Although that would be sovereignly unjust, yet he
can conclude nothing else from their letter; that they reflect not on
the queen having represented to him, that all Christendom is scandalized
because they would attempt to annul a marriage contracted so many years
ago, at the request of two great kings and under a dispensation from the
pope--a marriage confirmed by the birth of several children! And what
else? Let me see:… That if I rely on the opinion of several doctors and
universities, he refers, on his part, to the law of God upon the sanctity
and unity of marriage, and the highest authorities taken from the Hebrew
and Latin writers; that the decisions of the universities which I bring
forward are supported by no proofs; he cannot decide finally upon that,
and, if he should precipitate his judgment, they would no longer be able
to avert the evils with which it is said England is threatened; that he
desires as much as they that I may have male heirs, but he is not God
to give them to me; he has no greater wish than to please me as far as
lies in his power, without at the same time violating all the laws of
justice and equity; and, finally, he conjures them to cease demanding
of him things that are opposed to his conscience, in order that he may
be spared the pain of refusing! Mark that well, Cromwell--the pain of
refusing! Thus, you see, after having tried everything, spent everything,
and used every possible means, what remains now for me to hope?”
“All that you wish,” replied Cromwell; “everything without exception!
Why permit yourself to be governed by those who ought to be your slaves?
Among all the clergy who surround you, and whom you are able to reduce,
if you choose, to mendicity, can you not find a priest who will marry
you? If I were King of England, I would very soon convince them that
the happiness of _their_ lives depended entirely upon _mine_! Threaten
to withdraw from the authority of Rome, and you will very soon see them
yielding, on their knees, to all your demands.”
“Cromwell,” said Henry VIII., “I admire your spirit and the boldness of
the measures you advocate. From this moment I open to you the door of my
council. Remember the kindness and the signal favor with which I have
honored you. However, your inexperienced zeal carries you too far; you
forget that the day I would determine really to separate myself from the
Church of Rome, I would become schismatic, and the people would refuse to
obey me. Moreover I am a Catholic, and I wish to die one.”
“What of that?” replied Cromwell. “Am I not also a Catholic? Because your
majesty frightens the pope, will he cease to exist? Declare to him that
from this day you no longer recognize his authority; that you forbid the
clergy paying their tithes to, or receiving from him their nominations.
You will see, then, if the next day your present marriage is not
annulled and the one you wish to contract approved and ratified.”
“Do you really believe it?” said the king.
“I am sure of it,” replied Cromwell.
“No,” said the king. “It is a thing utterly impossible; the bishops would
refuse to accede to any such requirements, and they would be right. They
know too well that it is essential for the church to have a head in order
to maintain her unity, and without it nothing would follow but confusion
and disorder.”
“Well! who can prevent your majesty from becoming yourself that head?”
exclaimed Cromwell. “Is England not actually a monster now with two
heads, one of them wanting a thing, and the other not? Follow the example
given you by those German princes who are freeing themselves from the
yoke which has humbled them for so many years before the throne of a
pontiff who is a stranger alike to their affections and their interests!
Then everything anomalous will rectify itself, and your subjects cease
to believe that any other than yourself is entitled to their homage or
submission.”
“You are right, little Cromwell!” cried Henry VIII., this seductive and
perfidious discourse flattering at the same time his guilty passion and
the ambition that divided his soul. “But how would you proceed about
executing this marvellous project, of which a thought had already crossed
my own mind?--for, as I have just told you, the clergy will refuse to
obey me, and I shall then have no means of compelling them.”
“Your consideration and kindness make you forget,” replied Cromwell
adroitly, afraid of wounding the king’s pride, “the statutes of præmunire
offer you means both sure and easy. Is it not by those laws they have
tried Wolsey before the Parliament? In condemning him they have condemned
themselves, and have made themselves amenable to the same penalties. You
have them all in your power. Threaten to punish them in their turn, if
they refuse to take the oath acknowledging you as head of the church; and
do it fearlessly if they dare attempt to resist you.”
“Well, little Cromwell,” said Henry VIII., slapping him familiarly on
the shoulder, “I observe with great satisfaction your coolness and the
variety of resources you have at command. You see everything at a glance
and fear nothing. I have made all these objections only to hear how
you would meet them. Here, take these Roman documents, read them for
yourself, and you will be better able to appreciate their contents; while
I go and beg Anne to forget the wrongs I so cruelly reproach myself with
having inflicted on her.”
Saying this, Henry VIII. went out, and Cromwell followed him with his
eyes as he walked through the long gallery.
An ironical smile hovered over his thin and bloodless lips as he watched
him. “Go, go,” he murmured to himself, “throw yourself at the feet of
your silly mistress, and ask her pardon for wishing her to be queen
of England. They are grand, very grand, these kings, and yet they
find themselves very often held in the hollow of the hand of some low
and crafty flatterer! ‘Despicable creature!’ they will say. Yes, I am
despicable in the eyes of many; and yet they prepare, by my advice,
to overthrow the pillars of the church, in order to enrich me with its
consecrated spoils.”
He laughed a diabolical laugh; then suddenly his face grew dark, and a
fierce, malignant gleam shot from his eyes. “Go,” he continued--“go,
prince as false as you are wicked. I, at least, am your equal in cunning
and duplicity. You were not created for good, and the odious voice of
More will call you in vain to the path of virtue. My tongue--ay, mine--is
to you far sweeter! It carries a poison that you will suck with eager
lips. The son of the poor fuller will make you his partner in crime. He
will recline with you on your velvet throne, and perfidious cruelty will
unite us heart and soul!… Go, seek that fool whom you adore and who will
weary you very soon, and the vile, ambitious father who has begotten
her. But, for me! … destroy your kingdom, profane the sanctuary, light
the funeral pyre, and compel all those to mount it who shall oppose the
laws Cromwell will dictate to you! Two ferocious beasts to-day share the
throne of England! You will surfeit me with gold, and I will make you
drunk with blood! You shall proclaim aloud what I shall have whispered
in your ear! Ha! who of the two will be really king--Henry VIII. or
Cromwell? Why, Cromwell, without doubt; because he was born in the mire.
He has learned how to fly while the other was being fledged beneath the
shadow of the crown! You have been reared within these walls of gold,”
continued Cromwell, surveying the magnificent adornings of the royal
chamber; “these exquisite perfumes, escaping from fountains and flowers,
have always surround you. You have never known, like me, abandonment and
want, suffered from cold and hunger in a thatched cottage, and imbibed
the hatred, fostered in those abodes of wretchedness, against the rich;
but I have cherished that rage in my inmost soul! There it burns like a
consuming fire! I will have a palace. I will have power and be feared.
Servile courtiers shall fawn at my feet, adulation shall surround me. I
would grasp the entire world, and yet the cry of my soul would be, More,
still more!”
Saying this, Cromwell threw himself into the king’s arm-chair, and,
pushing contemptuously from him the papers he had taken to read,
abandoned himself entirely to the furious thirst of avarice and ambition
that devoured him.
* * * * *
The curfew had already sounded many hours, and profound silence reigned
over the city. Not a sound was heard throughout the dark and winding
streets, save the boisterous shouts of some midnight revellers returning
from a party of pleasure, or the dreary and monotonous song of a besotted
inebriate as he staggered toward his home.
In the mansion of the French ambassador, however, no one had retired; and
young De Vaux, impatiently waiting the return of M. du Bellay, paced with
measured tread up and down the large hall where for many hours supper had
been served.
Weary with listening for the sound of footsteps, and hearing only
the mournful sighing of the night-wind, he at length seated himself
before the fire in a great tapestried arm-chair whose back, rising
high above his head, turned over in the form of a canopy, and gave him
the appearance of a saint reposing in the depths of his shrine. For
a long time he watched the sparks as they flew upward from the fire,
then, taking a book from his pocket, he opened it at random; but before
reaching the bottom of the first page his eyes closed, the book fell from
his hands, and he sank into a profound sleep, from which he was aroused
only by the noise made by the ambassador’s servants on the arrival of
their master.
M. de Vaux, being suddenly aroused from sleep, arose hastily to his feet
on seeing the ambassador enter.
“I have waited for you with the greatest impatience,” he exclaimed with a
suppressed yawn.
“Say, rather, you have been sleeping soundly in your chair,” replied M.
du Bellay, smiling. “Here!” he continued, turning toward the valets who
followed him, “take my cloak and hat, and then leave us; you can remove
the table in the morning.”
Obedient to their master’s orders, they lighted several more lamps and
retired, not without regret, however, at losing the opportunity of
catching, during the repast, a word that might have satisfied their
curiosity as to the cause of M. du Bellay having remained at the king’s
palace until so late an hour.
“Well, monsieur! what has been done at last?” eagerly inquired young De
Vaux as soon as they had left.
“In truth, I cannot yet comprehend it myself,” replied Du Bellay. “In
spite of all my efforts, it has been impossible to clearly unravel the
knot of intrigue. This morning, as you know, nothing was talked of but
the downfall of Anne Boleyn. I was delighted; her overthrow would have
dispensed us from all obligations. Now the king is a greater fool about
her than ever, and, unless God himself strikes a blow to sever them, I
believe nothing will cure him of his infatuation. As I entered, his first
word was to demand why I had been so long in presenting myself. ‘Sire,’
I replied, ‘I have come with the utmost haste, I assure you, and am here
ready to execute any orders it may please you to give!’”
“‘Listen,’ he then said to me. ‘I have several things to tell you; but
the first of all is to warn you of my determination to arrest Cardinal
Wolsey. I am aware that you have manifested a great deal of interest in
him; … that you have even gone to see him when he was sick; … but that
is of no consequence. I am far from believing that you are in any manner
concerned in the treason he has meditated against me. Therefore I have
wished to advise you, that you may feel no apprehension on that account.’
I was struck with astonishment. ‘What! sire,’ I at last answered, ‘the
cardinal betray you? Why, he is virtually banished from England, where he
occupies himself, they say, only in doing works of charity and mercy.’
‘I know what I say to you,’ replied the king; ‘his own servants accuse
him of conspiring against the state. But I shall myself examine into the
depths of this accusation. In the meantime he shall be removed to the
Tower, and I will send Sir Walsh with instructions to join the Earl of
Northumberland, in order to arrest Wolsey at Cawood Castle, where he is
now established.’”
“Is it possible?” cried De Vaux, interrupting M. du Bellay. “That
unfortunate cardinal! Who could have brought down this new storm on his
head? M. du Bellay, do you believe him capable of committing this crime,
even if it were in his power?”
“I do not believe a word of it,” replied M. du Bellay, “and I know
not who has excited this new storm of persecution. I have tried every
possible means to ascertain from the king, but he constantly evaded
my questions by answering in a vague and obscure manner. I have been
informed in the palace that he had seen no person during the day, except
Cromwell, Lady Boleyn, and the Duke of Suffolk. Might this not be the
result of a plot concocted between them? This is only a conjecture, and
we may never get at the bottom of the affair. But let us pass on to
matters of more importance. The mistress is in high favor again. The king
is determined to marry her, and has proclaimed in a threatening manner
that he will separate himself from the communion of Rome, and no more
permit the supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff to be recognized in his
kingdom. He demands that the King of France shall do the same, and rely
on his authority in following his example.”
“What!” cried De Vaux, astounded by this intelligence. “And how have you
answered him, my lord?”
“I said all that I felt authorized or could say,” replied Du Bellay;
“but what means shall we use to persuade a man so far transported and
subjugated by his passions that he seems to be a fool--no longer capable
of reasoning, of comprehending either his duty, the laws, or the future?
I have held up to him the disruption of his kingdom, the horrors that
give birth to a war of religion, the blood that it would cause him to
spill.”
“‘I shall spill as much of it as may be necessary,’ he replied, ‘to make
them yield. They will have their choice. Already the representatives of
the clergy have been ordered to assemble. Well! they shall decide among
themselves which is preferable--death, exile, or obedience to my will.’
“Whilst saying this,” continued M. du Bellay, with a gloomy expression,…
“he played with a bunch of roses, carelessly plucking off the leaves with
his fingers.”
“But what has been able to bring the king, in so short a time, to such an
extremity?” asked De Vaux, whose eyes, full of astonishment and anxiety,
interrogated those of M. du Bellay.
“His base passions, without doubt; and, still more, the vile flattery
coming from some one of those he has taken into favor,” replied Du
Bellay impatiently.… “I tried in vain to discover who the arch-hypocrite
could be, but the king was never for a moment thrown off his guard; he
constantly repeated: ‘_I_ have resolved on this; _I_ will do that!’ … I
shall find out, however, hereafter,” continued Du Bellay; “but at present
I am in ignorance.”
“Has he said anything to you about the grand master?” asked De Vaux.
“No; but it seems he has been very much exercised on account of the
cordial reception Chancellor Duprat gave Campeggio when he passed through
France. ‘That man has behaved very badly toward me,’ he said sharply. ‘I
was so lenient as to let him leave my kingdom unmolested, after having
hesitated a long time whether I should not punish him severely for his
conduct; and, behold, one of your ministers receives and treats him with
the utmost magnificence!’
“I assured him no consequence should be attached to that circumstance,
and pretended that Chancellor Duprat was so fond of good cheer and
grand display he had doubtless been too happy to have an opportunity of
parading his wealth and luxury before the eyes of a stranger.
“He then renewed the attack against Wolsey. ‘If that be the case,’ he
exclaimed, ‘this must be a malady common to all these chancellors; for my
lord cardinal was also preparing to give a royal reception in the capital
of his realm of York; but, unfortunately,’ he added with an ironical
sneer, ‘I happen to be his master, and we have somewhat interfered with
his plans.’ He then attacked the pope, then our king; and finally, while
the hour of midnight was striking, exhausted with anger and excitement,
to my great relief, he permitted me to retire. Now,” added M. du Bellay,
“we will have to spend the rest of the night in writing, and to-morrow
the courier must be despatched.”
TO BE CONTINUED
PRUSSIA AND THE CHURCH.
II.
In February, 1848, Louis Philippe was driven from his throne by the
people of Paris, and the Republic was proclaimed. This revolution rapidly
spread over the whole of Europe. The shock was most violent in Germany,
where everything was in readiness for a general outburst. Most of the
governments were compelled to yield to the popular will and to make
important concessions. New cabinets were formed in Würtemberg, Darmstadt,
Nassau, and Hesse. Lewis of Bavaria was forced to abdicate. Hanover and
Saxony held out until Berlin and Vienna were invaded by the revolutionary
party, when they too succumbed. On the 13th of March the Vienna mob
overthrew the Austrian ministry, and Metternich fled to England.
Italy and Hungary revolted. Berlin was held all summer by an ignorant
revolutionary faction. In September fierce and bloody riots broke out in
Frankfort.
Popular meetings, secret societies, revolutionary clubs, violent
declamations, and inflammatory appeals through the press kept all Germany
in a state of agitation. Occasional outbreaks among the peasantry,
followed by pillage and incendiarism, increased the general confusion.
It was during this time of wild excitement that the elections for the
Imperial Parliament were held. To this assembly many avowed atheists,
pantheists, communists, and Jacobins were chosen--men who fully agreed
with Hecker when he declared that “there were six plagues in Germany--the
princes, the nobles, the bureaucrats, the capitalists, the parsons,
and the soldiers.” The parties in the Parliament took their names from
their positions in the assembly hall, and were called the extreme left,
the left, the left centre, the right centre, the right, and the extreme
right. The first three were composed of red republicans, Jacobins, and
liberals. To the right centre belonged the constitutional liberals; and
on the right and right centre sat the Catholic members, the predecessors
of the party of the _Centrum_ of the present day. The extreme right was
occupied by functionaries and bureaucrats, chiefly from Prussia. The
Parliament of Frankfort, in the _Grundrechte_, or _Fundamental Rights_,
which it proclaimed, decreed universal, suffrage, abolished all the
political rights of the aristocracy, the hereditary chambers in all the
states of Germany, set aside the existing family entails, and, though
nominally it retained the imperial power, degraded the emperor to a
republican president by giving him merely a suspensive veto.
While this Parliament was sitting the Catholic bishops of Germany
assembled in council at Würzburg, and, at the conclusion of their
deliberations, drew up a Memorial as firm in tone as it was clear and
precise in expression, in which they set forth the claims of the church.
“To bring about,” they said, “a separation from the state--that is
to say, from public order, which necessarily reposes on a moral and
religious foundation--is not according to the will of the church. If the
state will perforce separate from the church, so will the church, without
approving, tolerate what it cannot avoid; and when not compelled by the
duty of self-preservation, she will not break the bonds of union made
fast by mutual understanding.
“The church, entrusted with the solemn and holy mission, ‘As my Father
hath sent me, so send I ye,’ requires for the accomplishment of this
mission, whatever the form of government of the state may be, the fullest
freedom and independence. Her holy popes, prelates, and confessors have
in all ages willingly and courageously given up their life and blood for
the preservation of this inalienable freedom.”
In virtue of these principles the bishops, in this Memorial, claimed the
right of directing, without any interference on the part of the state,
theological seminaries, and of founding schools, colleges, and all kinds
of educational establishments; of exerting canonical control, unfettered
by state meddling, over the conduct of their clergy, as well as that of
introducing into their dioceses religious orders, congregations, and
pious confraternities, for which they demanded the same rights which the
new political constitution had granted to secular associations. Finally,
they asserted their right to free and untrammelled communication with the
Holy See; and, as included in this, that of receiving and publishing all
papal bulls, briefs, and other documents without the Royal Placet, which
they declared to be repugnant to the honor and dignity of the ministers
of religion.
The Frankfort Parliament decreed the total separation of church and
state, and was therefore compelled to guarantee the freedom of all
religions. This separation was sanctioned by the Catholic members of the
Assembly, who looked upon it as less dangerous to the cause of religion
and morality than ecclesiastical Josephism. In the present conflict
between the church and the German Empire the Catholic party has again
demanded, and in vain, the separation of church and state. In rejecting
their urgent request, Dr. Falk declared that the leading minds in England
and America are already beginning to regret that their governments have
so little control over the ecclesiastical organizations within their
limits.
Whilst the representatives of the German people at Frankfort were
abolishing the privileges of the nobles, decreeing the separation of
church and state, and forgetting the standing armies, the governments
were quietly gathering their forces. Marshal Radetzky put down the
Italian rebellion, Prince Windischgrätz quelled the democracy of Vienna,
and General Wrangel took possession of Berlin, without a battle. Russia,
at the request of Austria, sent an army into Hungary to destroy the
rebellion in that country, and the disturbances in Bavaria and in the
Palatinate were suppressed by Prussian troops under the present Emperor
of Germany. The representatives of the larger states withdrew from the
Frankfort Parliament, which dwindled, and finally, amidst universal
contempt and neglect, came to an end at Stuttgart, June 18, 1849.
But the liberties of the church were not lost. In Prussia, as we have
seen, a better state of things had begun with the imprisonment of the
heroic Archbishop of Cologne in 1837. In the face of the menacing
attitude of the German democrats and republicans, Frederick William IV.
confirmed the liberties of the Catholic Church by the letters-patent of
1847.
The constitutions of December 5, 1848, and January 31, 1850, were drawn
up in the lurid light of the revolution, which had beaten fiercest upon
the house of Hohenzollern. The king had capitulated to the insurgents,
withdrawn his soldiers from the capital, and abandoned Berlin, and with
it the whole state, for nine months to the tender mercies of the mob. He
was forced to witness the most revolting spectacles. The dead bodies of
the rioters were borne in procession under the windows of his palace,
while the rabble shouted to him: “Fritz, off with your hat.”
It is not surprising, in view of this experience, that we should
find in the constitution of 1850 (articles 15 to 18 inclusive) a
very satisfactory recognition of the rights of the church. Why these
paragraphs granting the church freedom to regulate and administer its
own affairs; to keep possession of its own revenues, endowments, and
establishments, whether devoted to worship, education, or beneficence;
and freely to communicate with the Pope, were inserted in the
constitution, we know from Prince Bismarck himself. In his speech in
the Prussian Upper House, March 10, 1873, he affirmed that “they were
introduced at a time when the state needed, or thought it needed, help,
and believed that it would find this help by leaning on the Catholic
Church. It was probably led to this belief by the fact that in the
National Assembly of 1848 all the electoral districts with a preponderant
Catholic population returned--I will not say royalist representatives,
but certainly men who were the friends of order, which was not the case
in the Protestant districts.”
The provisions of the constitution of 1850 with regard to the church were
honorably and faithfully carried out down to the beginning of the present
conflict. Never since the Reformation had the church in Prussia been
so free, never had she made such rapid progress, whether in completing
her internal organization or in extending her influence. The Prussian
liberals and atheists, who had fully persuaded themselves that without
the wealth and aid of the state the Catholic religion would have no
force, were amazed. The influence of the priests over the people grew
in proportion as they were educated more thoroughly in the spirit and
discipline of the church under the immediate supervision of the bishops,
unfettered by state interference; the number of convents, both of men
and women, rapidly increased; associations of all kinds, scientific,
benevolent, and religious, spread over the land; religious journals and
reviews were founded in which Catholic interests were ably advocated and
defended; and all the forces of the church were unified and guided by the
harmonious action of a most enlightened and zealous episcopate.
This was the more astonishing as the Evangelical Church, whose liberties
had also been guaranteed by the constitution of 1850, had shown itself
unable to profit by the greater freedom of action which it had received.
In fact, the Evangelical Church was lifeless, and it needed only this
test to prove its want of vitality. It was a state creation, and in an
age when the world had ceased to recognize the divine right of kings to
create religions. It was only in 1817 that the Lutheran and Calvinistic
churches of Prussia, together with the very name of Protestant, were
abolished by royal edict, and a new Prussian establishment, under the
title of “evangelical,” was imposed by the civil power upon a Protestant
population of nearly eight millions, whose religious and moral sense
was so dead that they seemed to regard with stolid indifference this
interference of government with all that freemen deem most sacred in
life. Acts of parliament may make “establishments,” but they cannot
inspire religious faith and life; and it was therefore not surprising
that, when the mummy of evangelicalism was put out into the open air of
freedom by the constitution of 1850, it should have been revealed to all
that the thing was dead.
Nevertheless, the Prussian government continued to act toward the
Catholic Church with great justice, and even friendliness, and the war
against Catholic Austria in 1866 wrought no change in its ecclesiastical
policy. Even the opening of the Vatican Council caused no alarm in
Prussia; on the contrary, King William, as it was generally believed at
least, was most civil to the Holy Father; and Prince Bismarck himself at
that time saw no reason for apprehension, though he had been the head
of the ministry already eight years. To what, then, are we to attribute
Prussia’s sudden change of attitude toward the church? Who began the
present conflict, and what was its provocation?
This is a question which has been much discussed in the Prussian House of
Deputies and elsewhere. Prince Bismarck has openly asserted in the House
of Deputies within the past year that the provocation was the definition
of papal infallibility by the Vatican Council on the 18th of June, 1870,
and subsequently the hostile attitude of the party of the _Centrum_
toward the German Empire.
Herr von Kirchmann, a member of the German Parliament and of the Prussian
House of Deputies, a national liberal, and not a Catholic, but in the
main a sympathizer with the spirit of the Falk legislation, has recently
discussed this whole subject with great ability, and--as far as it is
possible for one who believes in the Hegelian doctrine that “the state is
the present god”--also with fairness.[255]
To Prince Bismarck’s first assertion, that the definition of papal
infallibility was the unpardonable offence, which has been so strongly
emphasized by Mr. Gladstone and re-echoed with parrot-like fidelity by
the anti-Catholic press of Europe and America, Herr von Kirchmann makes
the following reply:
“It is difficult to understand how so experienced a statesman
as Prince Bismarck can ascribe to this decree of the
council such great importance for the states of Europe, and
particularly for Prussia and Germany. To a theorizer sitting
behind his books such a decree, it may be allowed, might
appear to be something portentous, since, taken from a purely
theoretical stand-point and according to the letter, the
infallibility of the Pope in all questions of religion and
morals gives him unlimited control over all human action;
and many a Catholic, when called upon to receive this
infallibility as part of his faith, may have found that he
was unable to follow so far; but a statesman ought to know
how to distinguish, especially where there is question of
the Catholic Church, between the literal import of dogmas
and their use in practical life. In the Catholic Church as a
whole, this infallibility, as is well known, has existed from
the earliest times; its organ hitherto has been the Ecumenical
Council in union with the Pope; but already before 1870 it was
disputed whether the Pope might not alone act as the organ of
infallibility. In 1870 the question was decided in favor of
the Pope; but we must consider that the ecumenical councils
have, as history shows, nearly always framed their decrees
in accordance with the views of the court of Rome; and this,
of itself, proves that the change made in 1870 is rather one
of form than of essence. Especially false is it to maintain
that by this decree a complete revolution in the constitution
of the church has been made. To the theorizer we might grant
the abstract possibility that something of this kind might
some day or other happen; but such _possibilities_ of the
abuse of a right are found in all the relations of public
life, in the state and its representatives as well as in the
church. Even in constitutions the most carefully drawn up such
possibilities are found in all directions. What a statesman
has to consider is not mere possibilities, but the question
whether the possessor of such right is not compelled, from the
very nature of things, to make of it only the most moderate and
prudent use. So long, therefore, as the Pope does not alter
the constitution of the church, that constitution remains,
precisely in its ancient form, such as it has been recognized
and tolerated by the state for centuries: and wherever the
relations between particular states and the court of Rome
have been arranged by concordats, these too remain unchanged,
unless the states themselves find it convenient to depart from
them. We see, in fact, that this infallibility of the Pope
has in no country of Europe or America altered one jot or
tittle in the constitution of the Catholic Church; and where
in particular countries such changes have taken place, they
have not been made by the ecclesiastical government, but by
the state and in its interest. In Germany even, and in Prussia
itself, the Pope has, since 1870, made no change in the church
constitution, as determined by the Canon Law; and when, in
some of his encyclicals and other utterances, he has taken up
a hostile attitude towards the German Empire and the Prussian
state, he has done this only in defence against the aggressive
legislation of the civil government. He has never hesitated to
express his disapprobation of the new church laws, but he has
in no instance touched the constitution of the Catholic Church
or the rights of the bishops.”[256]
It seems almost needless to remark that there is no necessary connection
between the doctrine of Papal infallibility and that of the essential
organization of the church; that the jurisdiction of the Pope was as
great, and universally recognized as such by Catholics, before the
Vatican Council as since; and consequently that it is not even possible
that the definition of 1870 should make any change in his authoritative
relation to, or power over, the church. His jurisdiction is wider than
his infallibility, and independent of it; and the duty of obedience to
his commands existed before the dogma was defined precisely as it exists
now; and therefore it is clearly manifest that the Vatican decree cannot
give even a plausible pretext for such legislation as the Falk Laws.
“Not less singular,” continues Herr von Kirchmann, “does it
sound to hear the party of the _Centrum_ in the Reichstag
and Prussian Landtag denounced as the occasion of the new
regulations between church and state. The members of this party
notoriously represent the views and wishes of the majority
of their constituents, and just as faithfully as the members
of the parties who side with the government. The reproach
that they receive their instructions from Rome is not borne
out by the facts; and if there were an understanding with
Rome of the kind which their adversaries affirm, this could
only be the result of a similar understanding on the part of
their constituents. Nothing could more strikingly prove that
the Catholic party faithfully represent the great majority in
their electoral districts than the repeated re-election of the
same representatives or of men of similar views. To this we
must add that the _Centrum_, though strong in numbers, is yet
in a decided minority both in the Reichstag and the Prussian
Landtag, and has always been defeated in its opposition to the
recent ecclesiastical legislation. If in other matters, by
uniting with opposition parties, it has caused the government
inconvenience, we have no right to ascribe this to feelings
of hostility; for on such occasions its orators have given
substantial political reasons for their opposition, and
instances enough might be enumerated in which, precisely
through the aid of the _Centrum_, many illiberal and dangerous
projects of law have fallen through; and for this the party
deserves the thanks of the country.
“The present action of the state against the Catholic Church
would be unjustifiable, if better grounds could not be adduced
in its favor. For the attentive observer, however, valid
reasons are not wanting. They are to be found, to put the
whole matter in a single word, in the great power to which
the Catholic Church in Prussia had attained by the aid of the
constitution and the favor of the government--a power which, if
its growth had been longer tolerated, would have become, not
indeed dangerous to the existence of the state, but a hindrance
to the right fulfilment of the ends of its existence.”[257]
Neither the Vatican Council, then, nor the Catholics of Prussia have
done anything to provoke the present persecution. To find fault with the
German bishops for accepting the dogma of infallibility, after having
strongly opposed its definition by the council, would be as unreasonable
as to blame a member of Congress for admitting the binding force of a
law the passage of which he had done everything in his power to prevent.
Their duty, beyond all question, was to act as they have acted. This
was not the offence: the unpardonable crime was that the church, as
soon as she was unloosed from the fetters of bureaucracy, had grown too
powerful. We doubt whether any more forcible argument in proof of the
indestructible vitality of the church can be found than that which may be
deduced from the universal consent of her enemies, of whatever shade of
belief or unbelief, that the only way in which she can be successfully
opposed is to array against her the strongest of human powers--that of
the state. A complete revolution of thought upon this subject has taken
place within the last half-century. Up to that time it was confidently
held by Protestants as well as infidels that, to undermine and finally
destroy the church, it would be simply necessary to withdraw from her the
support of the state; that to her freedom would necessarily prove fatal.
The experiment, as it was thought, had not been satisfactorily tried.
Ireland, indeed, had held her faith for three hundred years, in spite of
all that fiendish cruelty could invent to destroy it; but persecution
has always been the life of the faith. In the United States the church
had been free since the war of independence, but of us little was known;
and, besides, down to, say, 1830 even the most thoughtful and far-sighted
among us had serious doubts as to the future of the church in this
country.
But with the emancipation of the Catholics in Great Britain, the new
constitution of the kingdom of Belgium, and the completer organization
of the church in the United States, the test as to the action of freedom
upon the progress of Catholic faith began to be applied over a wide and
varied field and under not unfavorable circumstances. What the result
has been we may learn from our enemies. Mr. Gladstone expostulates for
Great Britain, and reaches a hand of sympathy to M. Emile de Laveleye
in Belgium. Dr. Falk, Dr. Friedberg, and even the moderate Herr von
Kirchmann, defend the tyrannical _May Laws_ as necessary to stop
the growth of the church in Germany; and at home the most silent of
Presidents and the most garrulous of bishops, forgetting that the cause
of temperance has prior claims upon their attention, have raised the
cry of alarm to warn their fellow-citizens of the dangerous progress of
popery in this great and free country. Time was when “the Free Church in
the Free State” was thought to be the proper word of command; but now
it is “the Fettered Church in the Enslaved State,” since no state that
meddles with the consciences of its subjects can be free.
If there is anything for which we feel more especially thankful, it is
that henceforth the cause of the church and the cause of freedom are
inseparably united. We have heard to satiety that the Catholic Church is
the greatest conservative force in the world, the most powerful element
of order in society, the noblest school of respect in which mankind have
ever been taught. Praised be God that now, as in the early days, he is
making it impossible that Catholics should not be on the side of liberty,
as the church has always been; so that all men may see that, if we love
order the more, we love not liberty the less!
“I will sing to my God as long at I shall be,” wrote an inspired king;
“put not your trust in princes.” No, nor in governments, nor in states,
but in God who is the Lord, and in the poor whom Jesus loved. From God
out of the people came the church; through God back to the people is she
going. We know there are still many Catholics who trust in kings and
believe in salvation through them; but God will make them wiser. The
Spirit that sits at the roaring Loom of Time will weave for them other
garments. The irresistible charm of the church, humanly speaking, lies in
the fact that she comes closer to the hearts of the people than any other
power that has ever been brought to bear upon mankind.
Having shown that the oppressive ecclesiastical legislation of Germany
was not provoked by the church, and that its only excuse is the
increasing power of the church, Herr von Kirchmann reduces all farther
discussion of this subject to the two following heads: 1st. How far ought
the state to go in setting bounds to this power of the Catholic Church?
and 2d. What means ought it to employ?
In view of the dangers with which every open breach of the peace between
church and state is fraught for the people, it would have been advisable,
he thinks, from political motives, to have tried to settle the difficulty
by a mutual understanding between the two powers; nor would it, in his
opinion, be derogatory to the sovereignty of the state to treat the
church as an equal, since she embraces in her fold all the Catholics of
the world, who have their directing head in the Pope, whose sovereign
ecclesiastical power cannot, therefore, as a matter of fact, be called in
question.
That Prussia did not make any effort to see what could be effected by
this policy of conciliation may, in the opinion of Herr von Kirchmann,
find some justification in the fact that the government did not expect,
and could not in 1871 foresee, the determined opposition of the Catholics
to the May Laws of 1873. At any rate, as he thinks, the high and
majestatic right of the state is supreme, and it alone must determine, in
the ultimate instance, how far and how long it will acknowledge any claim
of the church. Thus even this statesman, who is of the more moderate
school of Prussian politicians, holds that the church has no rights which
the state is bound to respect; that political interests are paramount,
and conscience, in the modern as in the ancient pagan state, has no claim
upon the recognition of the government. English and American Protestants,
where their own interests are concerned, would be as little inclined to
accept this doctrine as Catholics; in fact, this country was born of a
protest against the assumption of state supremacy over conscience; and
yet so blinding and misleading is prejudice that the Falk Laws receive
their heart-felt sympathy.
Though Herr von Kirchmann accepts without reservation the principles
which underlie the recent Prussian anti-Catholic legislation, and
thinks the May Laws have been drawn up with great wisdom and consummate
knowledge of the precise points at which the state should oppose the
growing power of the church, he yet freely admits that there are grave
doubts whether the present policy of Prussia on this subject can be
successfully carried out. That Prince Bismarck and Dr. Falk had but a
very imperfect knowledge of the difficulties which lay in their path,
the numerous supplementary bills which have been repeatedly introduced
in order to give effect to the May Laws plainly show. Where there is
question of principle and of conscience Prince Bismarck is not at home.
He believes in force; like the first Napoleon, holds that Providence is
always on the side of the biggest cannons; sneers about going to Canossa,
as Napoleon mockingly asked the pope whether his excommunication would
make the arms fall from the hands of his veterans. He knows the workings
of courts, and is a master in the devious ways of diplomacy. He can
estimate with great precision the resources of a country; he has a keen
eye for the weak points of an adversary. His tactics, like Napoleon’s,
are to bring to bear upon each given point of attack a force greater
than the enemy’s. He has, in his public life, never known what it is to
respect right or principle. With the army at his back he has trampled
upon the Prussian constitution with the same daring recklessness with
which he now violates the most sacred rights of conscience. Nothing, in
his eyes, is holy but success, and he has been consecrated by it, so
that the Bismarck-cultus has spread far beyond the fatherland to England
and the United States. Carlyle has at last found a living hero, the very
impersonation of the brute force which to him is ideal and admirable; and
at eighty he offers incense and homage to the idol. We freely give Prince
Bismarck credit for his remarkable gifts--indomitable will, reckless
courage, practical knowledge of men, considered as intelligent automata
whose movements are directed by a kind of bureaucratic and military
mechanism; and this is the kind of men with whom, for the most part,
he has had to deal. For your thorough Prussian, though the wildest of
speculators and the boldest of theorizers, is the tamest of animals. No
poor Russian soldier ever crouched more submissively beneath the knout
than do the Prussian pantheists and culturists beneath the lash of a
master. Like Voltaire, they probably prefer the rule of one fine Lion to
that of a hundred rats of their own sort. Prince Bismarck knew his men,
and we give him credit for his sagacity. Not every eye could have pierced
the mist, and froth, and sound, and fury of German professordom, and
beheld the craven heart that was beneath.
Only men who believe in God and the soul are dangerous rebels. Why should
he who has no faith make a martyr of himself? Why, since there is nothing
but law, blind and merciless force, throw yourself beneath the wheels
of the state Juggernaut to be crushed? The religion of culture is the
religion of indulgence, and no godlike rebel against tyranny and brute
force ever sprang from such worship. So long as Prince Bismarck had
to deal with men who were nourished on “philosophy’s sweet milk,” and
who worshipped at the altar of culture, who had science but not faith,
opinions but not convictions, amongst whom, consequently, organic union
was impossible, his policy of making Germany “by blood and iron” was
successful enough. But, like all great conquerors, he longed for more
kingdoms to subdue, and finding right around him a large and powerful
body of German citizens who did not accept the “new faith” that the
state--in other words, Prince Bismarck--is “the present god,” just as
a kind of diversion between victories, he turned to give a lesson to
the _Pfaffen_ and clerical _Dummköpfe_, who burnt no incense in honor
of his divinity. In taking this step it is almost needless to say that
Prince Bismarck sought to pass over a chasm which science itself does
not profess to have bridged--that, namely, which lies between the
worlds of matter and of spirit. Of the new conflict upon which he was
entering he could have only vague and inaccurate notions. Nothing is so
misleading as contempt--a feeling in which the wise never indulge, but
which easily becomes habitual with men spoiled by success. To the man who
had organized the armies and guided the policy which had triumphed at
Sadowa and Sedan what opposition could be made by a few poor priests and
beggar-monks? Would the arms fall from the hands of the proudest soldiers
of Europe because the _Pfaffen_ were displeased? Or why should not the
model culture-state of the world make war upon ignorance and superstition?
Of the real nature and strength of the forces which would be marshalled
in this great battle of souls a man of blood and iron could form no just
estimate. “To those who believe,” said Christ, “all things are possible”;
but what meaning have these words for Prince Bismarck? The soul, firm in
its faith, appealing from tyrant kings and states to God, is invincible.
Lifting itself to the Infinite, it draws thence a divine power. Like
liberty, it is brightest in dungeons, in fetters freest, and conquers
with its martyrdom. Needle-guns cannot reach it, and above the deadly
roar of cannon it rises godlike and supreme.
“For though the giant Ages heave the hill
And break the shore, and evermore
Make and break and work their will;
Though world on world in myriad myriads roll
Round us, each with different powers
And other farms of life than ours,
What know we greater than the soul?
On God and godlike men we build our trust.”
Men who have unwrapt themselves of the garb and vesture of thought and
sentiment with which the world had dressed them out, who have been born
again into the higher life, who have been clothed in the charity and
meekness of Christ, who for his dear sake have put all things beneath
their feet, who love not the world, who venerate more the rags of the
beggar than the purple of Cæsar, who fear as they love God alone, for
whom life is no blessing and death infinite gain, form the invincible
army of Christ foredoomed to conquer. “This is the victory which
overcometh the world--our Faith.”
Who has ever forgotten those lines of Tacitus, inserted as an altogether
trifling circumstance in the reign of Nero?--“So for the quieting of
this rumor [of his having set fire to Rome] Nero judicially charged with
the crime, and punished with most studied severities, that class, hated
for their general wickedness, whom the vulgar call _Christians_. The
originator of that name was one _Christ_, who in the reign of Tiberius
suffered death by sentence of the procurator, Pontius Pilate. The baneful
superstition, thereby repressed for the time, again broke out, not only
over Judea, the native soil of the mischief, but in the City also,
where from every side all atrocious and abominable things collect and
flourish.”[258]
“Tacitus,” says Carlyle, referring to this passage, “was the wisest, most
penetrating man of his generation; and to such depth, and no deeper, has
he seen into this transaction, the most important that has occurred or
can occur in the annals of mankind.”
We doubt whether Prince Bismarck to-day has any truer knowledge of the
real worth and power of the living Catholic faith on which he is making
war than had Tacitus eighteen hundred years ago, when writing of the rude
German barbarians who were hovering on the confines of the Roman Empire,
and who were to have a history in the world only through the action
of that “baneful superstition” which he considered as one of the most
abominable products of the frightful corruptions of his age.
That the Prussian government was altogether unprepared for the determined
though passive opposition to the May Laws which the Catholics have made,
Herr von Kirchmann freely confesses. It was not expected that there
would be such perfect union between the clergy and the people; on the
contrary, it was generally supposed that, with the aid of the Draconian
penalties threatened for the violation of the Falk Laws, the resistance
of the priests themselves would be easily overcome. These men love their
own comfort too much, said the culturists, to be willing to go to prison
and live on beans and water for the sake of technicalities; and so they
chuckled over their pipes and lager-beer at the thought of their easy
victory over the _Pfaffen_. They were mistaken, and Herr von Kirchmann
admits that the courage of the bishops and priests has not been broken
but strengthened by their sufferings for the faith.
“So long as we were permitted to hope,” he says, “that we
should have only the priests to deal with, there was less
reason for doubt as to the policy of executing the laws in
all their rigor; but the situation was wholly altered when it
became manifest that the congregations held the same views as
the bishops and priests.… It is easy to see that all violent,
even though legal, proceedings of the government against these
convictions of the Catholic people can only weaken those
proper, and in the last instance alone effective, measures
through which the May Laws can successfully put bounds to
the growing power of the church. These measures--viz., a
better education of the people and a higher culture of the
priests--can, from the nature of things, exert their influence
only by degrees. Not till the next generation can we hope to
gather the fruit of this seed; and not then, indeed, if the
reckless execution of the May Laws calls forth an opposition
in the Catholic populations which will shake confidence in
the just intentions of the government, and beget in the
congregations feelings of hatred for everything connected
with this legislation. Such feelings will unavoidably be
communicated to the children, and the teacher will in
consequence be deprived of that authority without which his
instructions must lack the persuasive force that is inherent
in truth. In such a state of warfare even the higher culture
of the clergy must be useless. Those who stand on the side of
the government will, precisely on that account, fail to win the
confidence of their people; and the stronger the aged pastors
emphasize the Canon Law of the church, the more energetically
they extend the realms of faith even to the hierarchical
constitution of the church, the more readily and faithfully
will their congregations follow them.
“It cannot be dissembled that the government, through the
rigorous execution of the May Laws, is raging against its own
flesh and blood, and is thereby robbing itself of the only
means by which it can have any hope of finally coming forth
victorious from the present conflict. It may be objected that
the resistance which is now so widespread cannot be much longer
maintained, and that all that is needed to crush it and bring
about peace with the church is to increase the pressure of the
law. Assertions of this kind are made with great confidence
by the liberals of both Houses of the Landtag whenever the
government presents a new bill; and the liberal newspapers,
which never grow tired of this theme, declare that the result
is certain and even near at hand.
“Now, even though we should attach no importance to the
contrary assertions of the Catholic party, it is yet evident,
from the declarations of the government itself, that it is not
all confident of reaching this result with the aid of the means
which it has hitherto employed or of those in preparation,
but that it is making ready for a prolonged resistance of the
clergy, who are upheld and supported by the great generosity
of the Catholic people. The ovations which the priests receive
from their congregations when they come forth from prison are
not falling off, but are increasing; and this is equally true
of the pecuniary aid given to them. It is possible that much
of this may have been gotten up by the priests themselves
as demonstration; but the displeasure of the still powerful
government officials which the participants incur, and the
greatness of the money-offerings, are evidence of earnest
convictions.
“Nothing, however, so strongly witnesses to the existence of a
perfect understanding between the congregations and the priests
as the fact that, though the law of May, 1874, gave to those
congregations whose pastors had been removed or had not been
legally appointed by the bishops the right to elect a pastor,
yet not even one congregation has up to the present moment
made any use of this privilege. When we consider that the
number of parishes where there is no pastor must be at least
a hundred; that in itself such right of choice corresponds
with the wishes of the congregations; farther, that the law
requires for the validity of the election merely a majority
of the members who put in an appearance; that a proposition
made to the _Landrath_ by ten parishioners justifies him in
ordering an election; and that, on the part of the influential
officials and their organs, nothing has been left undone to
induce the congregations to demand elections, not easily could
a more convincing proof of the perfect agreement of the people
with their priests be found than the fact that to this day in
only two or three congregations has it been possible to hunt
up ten men who were willing to make such a proposal, and that
not even in a single congregation has an election of this kind
taken place.”[259]
This is indeed admirable; and it may, we think, be fairly doubted
whether, in the whole history of the church, so large a Catholic
population has ever, under similar trials, shown greater strength
or constancy. Of the peculiar nature of these trials we shall speak
hereafter; the present article we will bring to a close with a few
remarks upon what we conceive to have been one of the most important
agencies in bringing about the perfect unanimity and harmony of action
between priests and people to which the Catholics of Prussia must in
great measure ascribe their immovable firmness in the presence of a most
terrible foe. We refer to those Catholic associations in which cardinals,
bishops, priests, and people have been brought into immediate contact,
uniting their wisdom and strength for the attainment of definite ends.
Such unions have nowhere been more numerous or more thoroughly organized
than in Germany, though their formation is of recent date. It was during
the revolution of 1848, of which we have already spoken, that the German
Catholics were roused to a more comprehensive knowledge of the situation,
and resolved to combine for the defence of their rights and the
protection of their religion. Popular unions under the name and patronage
of Pius IX. (Pius-Vereine) were formed throughout the fatherland, with
the primary object of bringing together once a week large numbers of
Catholic men of every condition in life. At these weekly meetings the
questions of the day, in so far as they touched upon Catholic interests,
were freely discussed, and thus an intelligent and enlightened Catholic
public opinion was created throughout the length and breadth of the land.
In refuting calumnies against the church the speakers never failed to
demand the fullest liberty for all Catholic institutions.
On the occasion of beginning the restoration and completion of the
Cathedral of Cologne, the most religious of churches, the proposition
that an annual General Assembly of all the unions should be held was
made and received with boundless enthusiasm. The first General Assembly
took place at Mayence in October, 1848; and thither came delegates from
Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, and all the other states of
Germany, whose confidence and earnestness were increased by the presence
of the Catholic members of the Parliament of Frankfort. For the first
time since Luther’s apostasy the Catholics of Germany breathed the air of
liberty. The bishops assembled at Würzburg, gave their solemn approbation
to the great work, and Pius IX. sent his apostolic benediction. Since
that time General Assemblies have been held at Breslau, May, 1849;
Ratisbon, October, 1849; Linz, 1850; Mayence, 1851; Münster, 1852;
Vienna, 1853; Linz, 1856; Salzburg, 1857; Cologne, 1858; Freyburg, 1859;
Prague, 1860; Munich, 1861; Aix-la-Chapelle, 1862; Frankfort, 1863, and
in other cities, down to the recent persecutions.
These assemblies represented a complete system of organization, in which
no Catholic interest was forgotten. Every village and hamlet in the land
was there, if not immediately, through some central union. We have
had the honor of being present at more than one of these assemblies,
and the impressions which we then received are abiding. Side by side
with cardinals, bishops, princes, noblemen, and the most learned of
professors sat mechanics, carpenters, shoemakers, and blacksmiths--not
as in the act of worship, in which the presence of the Most High
God dwarfs our universal human littlenesses to the dead-level of an
equal insignificance, but in active thought and co-operation for the
furtherance of definite religious and social ends. The brotherhood of the
race was there, an accomplished fact, and one felt the breathing as of a
divine Spirit compared with whose irresistible force great statesmen and
mighty armies are weak as the puppets of a child’s show.
We have not the space to describe more minutely the ends, aims, and
workings of the numberless Catholic associations of Germany; but we must
express our deep conviction that no study could be more replete with
lessons of practical wisdom for the Catholics of the United States.
Organization is precisely what we most lack. Our priests are laborious,
our people are devoted, but we have not even an organized Catholic
public opinion--nay, no organ to serve as its channel, and make itself
heard of the whole country. Many seem to think that the very question
of the necessity of Catholic education is still an open one for us; and
this is not surprising, since we have no system of Catholic education.
Catholic schools, indeed, in considerable number, there are, but there
is no organization. The great need of the church in this country is
the organization of priests and people for the promotion of Catholic
interests. Through this we will learn to know one another; our views
will be enlarged, our sympathies deepened, and the truth will dawn upon
us that, if we wish to be true to the great mission which God has given
us, the time has come when American Catholics must take up works which
do not specially concern any one diocese more than another, but whose
significance will be as wide as the nation’s life.
A STORY WITH TWO VERSIONS.
Yes, sir, this is Brentwood. And you are of the race, you say, though not
of the name. Clarkson, sir? Surely, surely. I remember well. Miss Jane
Brent--the first Miss Brent I can recall--married a Clarkson. So you are
her grandson, sir? Then you are right welcome to me and mine. Come in,
come in. Or, if you will do me the honor, sit here in the porch, sir, and
my Kate will bring you of her best, and right glad will we be to wait
again on one with the Brent blood in him.
None of the name left? Ah! Mr. Clarkson, have you never heard, then? But
you must have heard of James Brent. Surely, surely. He lives still, God
pity him! What’s that? You want to hear the story out? Well, sir, no man
living can tell you better than I, unless it be Mr. James’ self. Settle
yourself comfortably, Mr. Clarkson, and I’ll tell you all.
Yes, this is Brentwood. ’Twas your great-great-grandsire founded it, two
hundred years back, he and his brother--James and William. They began the
work which was to grow and grow into foundries and factories, and the
bank that was to ruin all. But I’m telling the end afore the beginning.
The next two brothers built the church you see there, sir, down the road;
and the next two after them added the tower and founded the almshouses;
and then came the fourth James and William Brent, and one of them was an
idiot, and the other was and is the last of the name.
I was twenty years older than Mr. James, and, before ever he came into
business, had served with his father. I watched him grow up, and I loved
him well. But from the first I knew he was different from the rest of his
race. He was his mother all over again--a true Mortimer, come of nobles,
not of townsfolk; all fire and sweetness and great plans for people’s
good and happiness, but with little of the far-sighted Brent prudence.
He was just as tender of Mr. William as if he had had all the wits of
himself, and used to spend part of every day with him, and amuse him part
of many a night when the poor gentleman could not sleep.
Their father died just when they came of age. They were twins, the last
Brent Brothers, sir; and ’twas a great fortune and responsibility to fall
full and with no restraint into such young hands. Mr. James seemed like
one heart-broken for nigh a year after, and carried on everything just as
his father had done, till we all wondered at it; then he saw Miss Rose
Maurice, and loved her--as well indeed he might--and after that things
changed. She was as simple in all her ways as she was beautiful, and
would have thought my cottage good enough, so long as he was in it with
her. But he!--well, sir, I know he has kissed the very ground she trod
on, and he didn’t think a queen’s palace too fine for her. As soon as
ever he saw her he loved her and set his soul to win her; and the very
next day he began a new home in Brentwood. Where is it? Alack! alack!
sir. Wait till ye _must_ hear. Let’s think, for a bit, of only the glad
days now.
You could not call it extravagance exactly. It set the whole town alive.
So far as he could, he would have none but Brentwood folk to work upon
the place where his bride was to dwell. And he said it was time that so
old a family should have a home that would last as long as they. Ah! me,
as long as they!
Of course there was a city architect and a grand landscape gardener; but,
oh! the thoughtfulness of him whom we were proud to call our master.
There, in the very flush of his youth and love and hope, he took care of
the widows and the little children; contrived to make work for them; was
here and there and everywhere; and there was not a beggar nor an idler in
Brentwood--not one. The house rose stately and tall; he had chosen a fair
spot for it, where great trees grew and brooks were running, all ready
to his hand; and that city man--why, sir, ’twas marvellous how he seemed
to understand just how to make use of it all, and to prune a little
here and add a little there, with vines and arbors and glades and a
wilderness, till you didn’t know what God had done and what he had given
his creatures wit to do. And in the sunniest corner of the house--Brent
Hall, as they called it--Mr. James chose rooms for Mr. William, who was
pleased as a child with it all, and used to sit day by day and watch the
work go on.
All the time, too, the Brent iron-foundries were being added to and
renovated, till there was none like them round about; and the town
streets were made like city streets, and the town itself set into such
order as never before; and when all was ready--’twas the work of but
three years, sir--when the house was hung with pictures and decked with
the best; in the spring, when the grass and the trees were green, and
the flowers were blooming fair, then he brought her home. And when I saw
her--well, sir, first I thought of the angels; but next (if I may say it;
and I wot it is not wrong)--next I thought of our Blessed Lady. There was
a great painting in the Hall oratory--by some Spanish painter, they said.
Murillo? Yes, sir, that is the name. It looked like Mrs. James Brent,
sir. Not an angel, but a woman that could suffer and weep and struggle
sore; and, pure and stainless, would still remember she was of us poor
humans, and so pity and pray for us.
We had been used to have Mr. Brent come into our houses, and to see him
in the poorest cottages and the almshouses, with smiles and cheery words
and money; but Mrs. James gave more than that, for she gave herself.
I’ve seen those soft hands bind wounds I shrank from; and that delicate
creature--I’ve seen her kneeling by beds of dying sinners, while her face
grew white at what she saw and heard, and yet she praying over ’em, and,
what’s more, _loving_ ’em, till she made the way for the priest to come.
And she laid out dead whom few of us would have touched for hire, and
she listened to the stories of the sad and tiresome, and her smile was
sunshine, and the very sight of her passing by lifted up our minds to
God. Her husband thwarted her in nothing. What was there to thwart her
in? He loved her, and she should do what she would in this work which was
her heart’s joy.
Then we had been used to see Mr. James in church regular, weekday Mass
and Sunday Mass; but Mrs. James was there any time, early mornings and
noons and nights. I fancy she loved it better than the stately Hall.
After she came, her husband added the great south transept window from
Germany, and the organ that people came miles to hear; and he said it was
her gift, not his. The window picture is a great Crucifixion and Our Lady
standing by. You’ll understand better, Mr. Clarkson, ere I finish, what
it says to Brentwood folk now.
The first year there was a daughter only; but the next there came a son.
After that, for six long years there were no more children, but then
another son saw the light. What rejoicings, what bonfires, what clanging
of bells, there was! But ere night the clanging changed to tolling and
the shouts to tears; for the child died. And when Mrs. James came among
us again, very white and changed and feeble, we all knew that with Mr.
James and Mr. William, we were seeing the last Brent Brothers, whatever
our grandchildren might see.
However, _she_ was spared, and Mr. James took heart of such grace as
that, and said it would be Brent and Son, which sounded quite as well
when one was used to it. And to make himself used to it--or to stifle the
disappointment, as I really think--he began the Brent Bank. There had
been a Brent Bank here for years past, and to it all Brentwood and half
the country round trusted their earnings. Only a few really rich people
had much to do with it, but men in moderate circumstances, young doctors
and lawyers with growing families, widows, orphans, seamstresses, the
factory people, laborers, thought there was no bank like that. Mr. James’
kind spirit showed itself there as elsewhere, and nobody felt himself too
insignificant to come there, if only with a penny.
Often and often I sit here and wonder, Mr. Clarkson, why it all was--why
God ever let it be--the shame and the sorrow and the suffering that came.
I know Mr. James was lavish, but, if he spent much on himself, he spent
much on others too; and he made God’s house as beautiful as his own. For
a time it looked as if God’s blessing was on him; for he prospered year
by year, and, except for his child’s dying and his wife’s frail health,
his cup of joy seemed running over.
By and by came a year--you may just remember it, sir--a year of very hard
times for the whole country. Banks broke, and old houses went by the
board, and men were thrown out of work, and there was a cry of distress
through all the land. But Brentwood folk hadn’t a thought of fear. Still,
in that year, from the very first of it, something troubled me. Master
was moody now and then; went up to the city oftener; had letters which
he did not show to me, who had seen all his business correspondence
and his father’s for thirty years and more. Sometimes he missed Mass,
and presently I noted with a pang that he did not receive the Blessed
Sacrament regular as he used. And Mrs. James was pale, and her eyes, that
once were as bright and clear as sunshine, grew heavy and dark, and she
looked more and more like the picture in her oratory; but it made one
very sad somehow to see the likeness.
The hard times began at midsummer. The Lent after there was a mission of
Dominican friars here. I was special busy that week, and kept at work
till after midnight. One evening, about eight, Mr. James came hurriedly
into the office and asked for the letters. He turned them over, looked
blank, then said the half-past eleven mail would surely bring the one
he wanted, and he should wait till then and go for it himself. For five
minutes or so he tried to cast up some accounts; then, too nervous-like
to be quiet longer, he said: “I’ll go and hear the sermon, Serle. It will
serve to fill up the time.” And off he went.
The clock struck the hour and the half-hour, and the hour and the
half-hour, and I heard the half-past eleven mail come in, and, soon
after, Mr. James’ step again, but slow now, like one in deep thought. In
he came, and I caught a glimpse of his face, pale and stern, with the
lips hard set. He shut himself into his private room, and I heard him
pacing up and down; then there came a pause, and he strode out again. He
seemed very odd to me, but he tried to laugh, as he put down two slips
for telegrams on my desk. “Which would you send?” said he.
One was, “Go on. I consent to all your terms.” The other was, “Stop. I
will have nothing more to do with it, no matter what happens.”
Something told me in my heart that, though he was trying to pass this off
in his old way like a joke, my master--my dear master--was in a great
strait. I looked up and answered what he had not said at all to get an
answer, with words which rose to my lips in spite of myself. Says I:
“Send what Mrs. James would want you to send, sir.” And then his ruddy,
kind face bleached gray like ashes, and he gave a groan, and the next
minute he was gone.
Though my work was done for that night, I would not leave the bank; for
I thought he might come back. And back he did come, a full hour after,
steady and grave and not like my master. For, Mr. Clarkson, the bright
boy-look I had loved so, which, with the boy-nature too, had never seemed
to leave him, was all gone out of his face, and I knew surely I never
should see it there again. He wrote something quickly, then handed it to
me, bidding me send telegrams to the bank trustees as there ordered. The
slip which bore my direction bore also the words, with just a pencil-line
erasure through them, “Go on. I consent to all your terms.” So, for good
or for ill, whichever it might be, the other was the one he must have
sent.
These telegrams notified the trustees of a most important meeting to
which they were summoned, and at that meeting I had, as usual, to be
present. Perhaps his colleagues saw no change in him; but I, who had
served him long, saw much. O Mr. Clarkson, Mr. Clarkson! whatever you may
be--and you are young still--_be honest_. For, sir, there’s one thing of
many terrible to bear, and it’s got to be borne here or hereafter by them
as err from uprightness; and that thing is shame. I’d seen him kneel at
the altar that morning, and she beside him, bless her! That’s where he
got strength to endure the penance he had brought upon himself; else I
don’t know how he ever could have borne it or have done it.
They sat there about him where they had often sat before, those fifteen
country gentlemen, some of whom had been his father’s and his uncle’s
friends, and some his own schoolmates and companions. And he stood up,
and first he looked them calm and fearless full in their faces, and then
his voice faltered and stopped, and then they all felt that it was indeed
something beyond ordinary that was coming.
Don’t ask me to tell my master’s shame as he told it, without a gloss or
an excuse, plain and bald and to the point. I knew and they knew that
there was excuse for his loving and lavish nature, but he made none for
himself.
Well, there’s no hiding what all the world knows now. He had let himself
be led away into speculation and--God pity and forgive him!--into fraud,
till only ruin or added and greater sin stared him in the face; then,
brought face to face with that alternative, he had chosen--just ruin, sir.
There was dead silence for a space, till Sir Jasper Meredith, the oldest
man there, and the justest business man I ever met, said gravely: “Do you
realize, Mr. Brent, that this implies ruin to others than to you?”
He was not thinking of himself, though this trouble would straiten him
sorely; he was thinking, and so was my master, and so was I, of poor men,
and lone women, and children and babies, made penniless at a blow; of the
works stopped; of hunger and sickness and cold. Mr. James bowed his head;
he could not speak.
Then I had to bring out the books, and we went carefully over them
page by page. It was like the Day of Judgment itself to turn over those
accounts, and to read letters that had to be read, and to find out, step
by step, and in the very presence of the man we had honored and trusted,
that he had really fallen from his high place. He quivered under it, body
and soul, but answered steadily every question Sir Jasper put to him;
spoke in such a way that I was sure he as well as I thought of the last
great day, and was answering to One mightier than man. And presently,
when they had reached the root of it--well, Mr. Clarkson, it was sin
and it was shame, and I dare not call it less before God; yet it was
sin which many another man does unblushingly, and had he persisted in
it--had he only the night previous sent that message, “Go on”--it was
possible and probable that he could have saved himself. Yet, if I could
have had my choice then or now, I would rather have seen him stand there,
disgraced and ruined by his own act and will, than have had him live for
another day a hypocrite.
But Sir Jasper said never a word of praise or blame till the whole
investigation was ended; listened silently while Mr. James told his plan
to sell all he owned in Brentwood, pay what debts he could, and then
begin life over again abroad, and work hard and steadily to retrieve his
fortunes, that he might pay all and stand with a clear conscience before
he died. Then Sir Jasper rose and came to him, put his two hands on Mr.
James’ shoulders, and looked him straight in the eyes. “James Brent,”
he said, “I knew your father before you, and your father’s father, but
I never honored them more, and I never honored you more, than on this
day when you confess to having disgraced your name and theirs, but have
had the honesty and manliness to confess it. Disgrace is disgrace; but
confession is the beginning of amendment.”
That was all. There was no offer of money help; all Sir Jasper could
offer would have been but a drop in the ocean of such utter ruin. There
was no advice to spare himself before he spared his neighbor; Sir Jasper
was too just for that. But after those words I saw my master’s eyes grow
moist and bright, and a gleam of hope come into his face. My poor master!
my poor master! Thank God we cannot see the whole of suffering at the
beginning!
The intention was not to let the news get abroad that night. Mr. James
went home to tell his wife and children--how terrible that seemed to
me!--and I sat busy in the office. It was the spring of the year. Fifteen
years ago the coming month he had brought his bride home in the sunshine
and the flowers. This afternoon darkened into clouds, and rain came and
the east wind. I lighted the lamps early and went to my work again.
Presently I heard a sound such as I never heard before--a low growl, or
roar, or shout, that wasn’t thunder or wind or rain. It grew louder; it
was like the tramp of many feet, hurrying fast, and in the direction of
the bank. Then cries--a name, short, distinct, repeated again and again:
“Brent! Brent! James Brent!”
I went to the window. There they were, half Brentwood and more, clamoring
for the sight of the man they trusted above all men. I flung the window
up and they saw me.
“Halloo, there, Joseph Serle!” cried the leader, a choleric Scot who had
not been many years among us. “Where’s our master?”
“Not here,” says I, with a sinking at my heart.
“He knows,” piped a woman’s shrill voice; “make him tell us true.”
And then the Scot cries again: “Halloo, Joseph Serle, there! Speak us
true, mon, or ye’ll hang for’t. Is our money safe?”
What could I say? Face after face I saw by the glare of torches--faces of
neighbors and friends and kin--and not one but was a loser, and few that
were not well-nigh ruined. And while I hesitated how to speak again that
woman spoke: “Where’s James Brent? Has he run, the coward?”
That was too much. “He’s home,” cried I, “where you and all decent folk
should be.”
“Home! home!” They caught the word and shouted it. “We’ll go home too.
We’ll find James Brent.” And the tide turned towards the Hall.
I flew down the back-stairs to the stable, mounted the fleetest horse,
and galloped him bareback to Brent Hall; but, fast as I rode, the east
wind bore an angry shout behind me, and, if I turned my head, I saw
torches flaring, and the ground seemed to tremble with the hurrying tramp
of feet.
I don’t know how they bore it or how I told ’em. I know I found them
together, him and her, and she was as if she had not shed a tear, and her
eyes were glowing like stars, bright, and tender, and sad, and glad all
at once. I had hardly time to tell the news, when the sound I had dreaded
for ’em broke upon us like the rush and the roar of an awful storm. On
they came, trampling over the garden-beds, waving their torchlights,
calling one name hoarse and constant--“Brent! Brent! James Brent!”
“My love,” he said, bending down to her, “stay while I go to them.”
And then she looked at him with a look that was more heavenly than any
smile, and said only: “James, my place is by your side, and I will keep
it.”
He put his hand quick over his eyes like one in great awe, smiled with a
smile more sad than tears, then opened the hall door and stood out before
the crowd--there where many a man and woman of them had seen him bring
his young bride home. And the sudden silence which fell upon them his own
voice broke. “My friends,” he said, “what would you have of me?”
Straight and keen as a barbed arrow, not from one voice, but from many,
the question rose, “Is our money safe?” And after that some one called:
“We’ll trust your word, master, ’gainst all odds.”
I had thought that scene in the bank was like the Judgment Day; but what
was this? He tried to speak, but his lips clave together. Then I saw her
draw a little nearer--not to touch him or to speak to him; she did not
even look at him, neither at the people, but out into the darkness, and
up and far away; and her very body, it seemed to me, was praying.
“Is our money safe?” It was like a yell now, and James Brent made answer:
“My friends, I am a ruined man.”
“Is our money safe?” Little children’s voices joined in the cry. My God,
let Brentwood never hear the like again!
My master held out his hands like any beggar; then he fell down upon his
knees. “I confess to you and to God,” he said, “there is not one penny
left.”
Mr. Clarkson, I am Brentwood born and bred. I love my master, but I love
my place and people too. We are a simple folk and a loving folk. It is
an awful thing to shake the trust of such. They had deemed their honor
and their property for ever safe with this one man, and in an hour and at
a word their trust was broken, their scanty all was gone, their earthly
hopes were shattered. Mr. Clarkson, sir, it drove them wild.
That day had set on Brent Hall fair and stately; the morrow dawned on
blackened ruins. The grounds lay waste; the fountains were dry; pictures
which nobles had envied had fed the flames; fabrics which would have
graced a queen stopped the babbling of the brooks; and in front of Brent
Bank hung effigies of the last Brent Brothers, with a halter about the
neck of each.
He had planned--my master, my poor master!--to retrieve all. Why could it
not be? God knows best, but it is a mystery which I cannot fathom. That
night’s horror and exposure brought him to the very gates of death; and
when he rose up at last, it was as a mere wreck of himself, never to work
again. His wife’s dowry went to the people whom he had ruined and who had
ruined him. They lived until her death, as he lives still, on charity.
And that is all? No, Mr. Clarkson, not quite all. He was brave enough,
since he could not win back his honor otherwise, to stay among us and
gain a place again in the hearts he had wounded sore. Sometimes I think
he teaches us a better lesson, old, and alone, and poor, than if he had
come to build his fallen home once more. I think, sir, we have learned to
pity and forgive as we never should have done otherwise, since we have
seen him suffering like any one of us; as low down as any one of us.
JAMES BRENT’S VERSION.
He has told you the story, then, my boy, has he? And you are the last of
us, and you have my name--James Brent Clarkson. The last? Then I will
tell you more than he could tell you. Do not shrink or fancy it will pain
me. I would like to let you know all, my boy--not for my sake; but you
say you are only half a Catholic, and I would have you learn something of
the deep reality of the true faith.
The night I waited for the half-past eleven train I had been stopped on
my way to the bank by a crowd at the church door, and I heard one man say
to another: “They’re dark times, neighbor--as dark as our land’s seen
these hundred years.” And his mate answered him: “Maybe so, Collins;
maybe so. But Brentwood don’t feel ’em much. I believe, and so does
most folks, that if all other houses fell, and e’en the Bank of England
broke, Brent Brothers would stand. It’s been honest and true for four
generations back, and so ’twull be to the end on’t.” Then the crowd
parted, the men went into the church, and I passed down the street.
“Honest and true for four generations back, and so ’twull be to the end
on’t.” The words haunted me. At last, in desperation, to rid myself of
the thought, I went to church also. Going in by a side door, I found
myself in a corner by a confessional, quite sheltered from view, but
with the pulpit in plain sight. There, raised high above the heads of
the people, the preacher stood, a man of middle age, who looked as if
he had been at some time of his life in and of the world; his face that
of one who has found it almost a death-struggle to subdue self to the
obedience and the folly of the cross. He seemed meant for a ruler among
his fellows. I wondered idly what he was doing there in the preacher’s
frock, speaking to the crowd.
He was telling, simply and plainly, of our Lord’s agony in the garden.
But simple and plain as were his words, there was something in the face
and voice which drew one into sympathetic union with this man, who spoke
as if he were literally beholding the load of our sin lying upon the
Lord’s heart till his sweat of blood started. And when he had painted
the scene to us, he paused as hearing the awful cry echo through the
stillness that reigned in the crowded church, then bent forward as if his
eyes would scan our very hearts, and spoke once more.
I cannot tell you what he said, but before he ended I knew this: my sin
cost our Lord’s agony; added sin of mine would be added anguish of his.
The choice lay before me. When I showed Serle those two despatches, the
one “Stop,” the other “Go on,” I held there what would be my ruin for
time or for eternity.
There is a world unseen, and mighty; its powers were round me that
night like an army. Hitherto I had been deceiving myself with the plea
of necessity of others’ interests to be considered, of my honor to be
sustained. That night another motive rose before me, but it was of an
honor put to dishonor--the Lord of glory bowed down to the earth by shame.
The letter must be answered before morning, so pressing was my need.
I decided to go to the telegraph office, and by the time I reached it
my mind must be made up. But, in the street, I came face to face with
the preacher I had heard that night. The moon was near the full. We two
looked straight at each other, passed, then turned as by one impulse,
and faced again. They who fight a fight to its end, and conquer, but
only with wounds whose scars they must bear to their graves, sometimes
gain a great power of reading the souls of those who are fighting a like
contest, and know not yet if it will end in victory or defeat. Some fight
like mine I felt sure that priest had fought. “What would you have, my
brother?” he asked.
“Answers to two questions, father,” I replied. “If a man has done wrong
to others, and can only repair it by added wrong, shall he disgrace
his own good name for ever by avowal, or shall he sin? And if his fall
involves the suffering of his innocent wife and children, may he not save
himself from shame for their sake? It is a matter which may not wait now
for confession even. Answer as best you may, for the love of God.”
I fancied that the stern face before me softened and grew pale, and in
the momentary stillness I understood that the Dominican was praying. Then
he answered, few words and firm, as one who _knew_:
“To choose disgrace is to choose the path our divine Lord chose. To
involve our dearest in suffering is to know his anguish whose blessed
Mother stood beneath his cross.”
Then, after one more slight, intense silence, “My brother,” he said
earnestly, “I do not know your life, but I know my own. To drink the
Lord’s cup of shame to its dregs--_with him_--is a blessed thing to do,
if he gives a sinner grace to do it.”
Tell me a thousand times that you have no faith yourself; that to love
God passionately is a dream, a delusion, unworthy of our manly nature;
that to choose shame is folly, to choose suffering is a mad mistake--what
shame could atone for my sins or give back to the poor the means of which
my folly had robbed them? What can your words count with those who have
once tasted the bitter sweetness of the Lord’s own chalice? Suddenly,
standing there, I knew what it means to love God more than houses or
lands, wife or children; to have him more real to the soul than they to
the heart; to be willing and glad to forsake all for him; to know I had
one more chance left to do his will, not Satan’s; and to make my choice.
Having brought his agony on him, there was nothing more I _could_ do but
bear it with him.
My boy, though you came on my invitation, you chose the twilight in
which to come to me, that I might hide my shame at meeting you. Such
shame _died dead_ in two awful nights and days: First, confession before
the priest of God; then to colleagues and friends; then to my wife and
to my son--oh! that stings yet; then to an angry throng, whose trust I
had betrayed, whose hopes I had blasted, whose love and reverence I had
turned to hate and scorn. I have seen my home in ruins, my effigy hung
up and hooted at in the public square, my name become a byword, my
race blotted out. I am an old man now, and still they tell my story in
Brentwood; each child learns it; strangers hear of it. Yet, if the power
were mine to alter these twenty years of humiliation, I would not lose
one hour of suffering or shame.
You ask me why? Thirty-five years ago I stood here, the centre and the
favorite of this town, and I set myself to work my own will, to gain
glory for me and mine. My wife, my name, my home, were my idols. It
seemed an innocent ambition, but it was not for God, and it led me into
evil work. You told me that since you came of age you have been but once
to confession. It is by the light of that sacrament that what seems to
you the mystery of my life is read. For a Catholic--whether striving
after perfection, or struggling up from sin to lasting penitence--has
for pattern the life of Jesus, the doing all in union with him, after
his example. What is the sacrament of penance but the bearing of shame,
though in the presence of a compassionate priest, with him who, when
he could have rescued us at the price of one drop of his most precious
blood, chose to die in ignominy, bearing before the world the entire
world’s disgrace? My boy, if in any way, by the love of our common name,
I can influence you, _go back to confession_. It is the very sacrament
for men who would be upright, and loyal, and strong, and true; or who,
having fallen, would humbly and bravely bear for Christ’s sake the
disclosure and the penalty.
My penance--given by God, mark you--was heavy, men think. Was it heavier
than my sin? They do not know everything. All my life I had been helped,
guarded, upheld; and for such to fall is a deadlier sin than for others.
The infinite love of God bore with me and saved me. And as, day by day,
like the unremitted lashes of a scourge, suffering fell to my portion,
I tell you that a strange, an awful sweetness mingled with the anguish.
I knew it was the hand of God that smote me, and that he smote here to
spare hereafter.
Oh! do not look at me. Stop! Turn your face away! I thought all such
shame was dead, but there are moments when it overwhelms me with its
sting. Did I say or dare to think that _God loves me_? Wait, wait, till I
can remember what it means!
Yes, I know now. Through all that night, while the torches glared, and
wrathful faces looked curses at me, and lips shouted them, ever through
all I saw, as it were, One sinless but reputed with the wicked; stripped
of his garments as I of my pride; made a spectacle to angels and to men;
mocked, reviled, scourged, crucified; and through the wild tumult I heard
a voice say, as of old to the repentant thief on the cross: “This day
thou shalt be with me.” And through all my heart was answering to his
most Sacred Heart, “I, indeed, justly; for I receive the due reward of
my deeds: but this man hath done no evil.” How could I wish to be spared
a single pang or lose one hour of shame with him? What part could any
Christian take but to suffer with him, having made him suffer? And when
one has said “with him,” one has explained all. But, somehow, people do
not always seem to understand.
* * * * *
Understand? Ah! no. It is a story, not of two versions, but of many. Some
called James Brent a fool, and some a madman, and some said he should
have saved his honor and his name at all hazards; and some, that he had
no right to entail such suffering on his household. But there is one
light by which such stories should be read, that is truer than these.
When time is gone, and wealth is dust, and earthly honor vanishes like
smoke, then, by the standard of the cross of Christ, wealth, and pomp,
and pleasure, and business shall be duly tried. Shun humiliation here
as we will, there shall be after this the judgment, when the Prince of
Glory, who pronounces final sentence, will be he who, while on earth,
chose for his portion a life of suffering and a death of shame.
ANTI-CATHOLIC MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES.
Like commercial panics, periodical outbursts of irreligious fanaticism
seem to have become regular incidents in the history of the United
States--occurrences to be looked for with as much certainty as
if they were the natural outgrowth of our civilization and the
peculiarly-constituted condition of American society. Though springing
from widely different causes, these intermittent spasms have a marked
resemblance in their deleterious effects on our individual welfare
and national reputation. Both are demoralizing and degrading in their
tendencies, and each, in its degree, finally results in the temporary
gain of a few to the lasting injury and debasement of the multitude.
In other respects they differ materially. Great mercantile reverses
and isolated acts of peculation, unfortunately, are not limited to one
community or to the growth of any particular system of polity, but are
as common and as frequent in despotic Asia and monarchical Europe as in
republican America. Popular ebullitions of bigotry, on the contrary,
are, or, more correctly, ought to be, confined to those countries where
ignorance and intolerance usurp the place of enlightened philanthropy and
wise government. They are foreign to the spirit of American institutions,
hostile to the best interests of society, and a curse to those who
tolerate or encourage them. The brightest glory of the fathers of the
republic springs, not so much from the fact that they separated the
colonies from the mother country and founded a new nation--for that is
nothing strange or unheard-of in the world’s history--but that they made
its three millions of inhabitants free as well as independent: free
not only from unjust taxation and arbitrary laws, but for ever free to
worship their Creator according to the dictates of their conscience,
unawed by petty authority and unaffected by the shifting counsels of
subsequent legislators.
From this point of view the Revolution appears as one of the grandest
moral events in the records of human progress; and when we reflect on
the numerous pains, penalties, and restrictions prescribed by the
charters and by-laws of the colonies from whence our Union has sprung,
it challenges our most profound admiration and gratitude. This complete
religious equality, guaranteed by our fundamental law, has ever been
the boast of every true American citizen, at home and abroad. From the
halls of Congress to the far Western stump-meeting we hear it again
and again enunciated; it is repeated by a thousand eloquent tongues
on each recurring anniversary of our independence, and is daily and
weekly trumpeted throughout the length and breadth of the land by the
myriad-winged Mercuries of the press. This freedom of worship, freedom
of conscience, and legal equality, as declared and confirmed by our
forefathers, has become, in fact, not only the written but also the
common law of the land--the birthright of every native-born American, the
acquired, but no less sacred, privilege of every citizen by adoption.
Whoever now attempts to disturb or question it, by word or act, disgraces
his country in the eyes of all mankind, and defiles the memory of our
greatest and truest heroes and statesmen.
So powerful, indeed, were the example and teachings of those wise men who
laid broad and deep the foundations of our happy country that, during the
first half-century of our national existence, scarcely a voice was raised
in opposition or protest against the principle of religious liberty
as emphatically expressed in the first amendment to the Constitution.
A whole generation had to pass away ere fanaticism dared to raise its
crest, until the solemn guarantees of our federal compact were assailed
by incendiary mobs and scouted by so-called courts of justice. The
first flagrant instance of this fell spirit of bigotry happened in
Massachusetts, and naturally was directed against an institution of
Catholic learning.
In 1820 four Ursuline nuns arrived in Boston and established there a
house of their order. Six years later they removed to the neighboring
village of Charlestown, where they purchased a piece of ground, and,
calling it Mt. St. Benedict, erected a suitable building and reduced the
hitherto barren hill-side to a state of beautiful cultivation. In 1834
the community had increased to ten, all ladies of thorough education
and refinement. From the very beginning their success as teachers was
acknowledged and applauded, and their average attendance of pupils was
computed at from fifty to sixty. Of these, at least four-fifths were
Protestants, the daughters of the best American families, not only of New
England, but of the Middle and Southern States. Though it was well known
that the nuns had ever been most scrupulously careful not to meddle with
the religious opinions of their scholars, and that not one conversion to
the church could be ascribed to their influence, the fact that a school
conducted by Catholic religious should have acquired so brilliant a
reputation, and that its patrons were principally Protestants of high
social and political standing, was considered sufficient in the eyes of
the Puritan fanatics to condemn it.
Its destruction was therefore resolved on, and an incident, unimportant
in itself, occurred in the summer of 1834 which was eagerly seized upon
by the clerical adventurers who then, as now, disgraced so many sectarian
pulpits. It appears that an inmate of the convent, a Miss Harrison,
had, from excessive application to music, become partially demented, and
during one of her moments of hallucination left the house and sought
refuge with some friends. Her brother, a Protestant, having heard of her
flight, accompanied by Bishop Fenwick, brought her back to the nunnery,
to her own great satisfaction and the delight of the sisterhood. This
trifling domestic affair was eagerly taken up by the leaders of the
anti-Catholic faction and magnified into monstrous proportions. The nuns,
it was said, had not only driven an American lady to madness, but had
immured her in a dungeon, and, upon her attempting to escape, had, with
the connivance of the bishop and priests, actually tortured her to death.
Falsehoods even more diabolical were invented and circulated throughout
Boston. The following Sunday the Methodist and Congregational churches
rang again with denunciations against Popery and nunneries, while one
self-styled divine, a Dr. Beecher, the father of a numerous progeny of
male and female evangelists, some of whom have since become famous in
more senses than one, preached no less than three sermons in as many
different churches on the abominations of Rome. All the bigotry of Boston
and the adjacent towns was aroused to the highest pitch of frenzy, and
threats against the convent were heard on every side.
To pacify the public mind the selectmen of Charlestown, on the following
day, the memorable 11th of August, appointed a committee to examine into
the truth of the charges. They waited on the nuns, and were received
by Miss Harrison, who was alleged to have been foully murdered. Under
her personal guidance they searched every part of the convent and its
appurtenances, till, becoming thoroughly satisfied with the falsity of
the reports, they retired to draw up a statement to that effect for
publication in the newspapers. This was what the rabble dreaded, and, as
soon as the intention of the committee became known, the leaders resolved
to forestall public sentiment by acting at once.
Accordingly, about nine o’clock in the evening, a mob began to collect
in the neighborhood of Mt. St. Benedict. Bonfires were lit and exciting
harangues were made, but still there were many persons reluctant to
believe that the rioters were in earnest. They would not admit that any
great number of Americans could be found base and brutal enough to attack
a house filled with defenceless and delicate women and children. They
were mistaken, however; they had yet to learn to what lengths fanaticism
can be carried when once the evil passions of corrupt human nature are
aroused. Towards midnight a general alarm was rung, calling out the
engine companies of Boston, not to quell any fire or disturbance, but,
as was proved by their conduct, to reinforce the rioters, if necessary.
The first demonstration was made by firing shot and stones against the
windows and doors of the main building, to ascertain if there were any
defenders inside; but, upon becoming satisfied that there were none, the
cowardly mob burst open the gates and doors, and rushed wildly through
the passages and rooms, swearing vengeance against the nuns.
Trusting to the protection of the authorities, the gentle sisters were
taken by surprise. The shots of their assailants, however, awakened
them to a sense of danger. Hastening from their beds, they rushed to
the dormitories, aroused the sleeping children, and had barely time
to avoid the fury of the mob by escaping through a back entrance in
their night-clothes. Everything portable, including money and jewelry
belonging to the pupils, was laid hold of by the intruders, the furniture
and valuable musical instruments were hacked in pieces, and then the
convent was given to the flames amid the frantic cheers of assembled
thousands. “Not content with all this,” says the report of Mr. Loring’s
committee, “they burst open the tomb of the establishment, rifled it of
the sacred vessels there deposited, wrested the plates from the coffins,
and exposed to view the mouldering remains of their tenants. Nor is it
the least humiliating feature, in this scene of cowardly and audacious
violation of all that man ought to hold sacred, that it was perpetrated
in the presence of men vested with authority and of multitudes of our
fellow-citizens, while not one arm was lifted in the defence of helpless
women and children, or in vindication of the violated laws of God and
man. The spirit of violence, sacrilege, and plunder reigned triumphant.”
The morning of the 12th of August saw what for years had been the quiet
retreat of Christian learning and feminine holiness a mass of blackened
ruins; but the character of Massachusetts had received even a darker
stain, a foul blot not yet wiped from her escutcheon. It was felt by
the most respectable portion of the citizens that some step should be
taken to vindicate the reputation of the State, and to place the odium
of the outrage on those who alone were guilty. Accordingly, a committee
of thirty-eight leading Protestant gentlemen, with Charles G. Loring
as chairman, was appointed to investigate and report on the origin and
results of the disgraceful proceeding. It met in Faneuil Hall from day
to day, examined a great number of witnesses, and made the most minute
inquiries from all sources. Its final report was long, eloquent, and
convincing. After the most thorough examination, it was found, those
Protestant gentlemen said, that all the wild and malicious assertions put
forth in the sectarian pulpits and repeated in the newspapers, regarding
the Ursulines, were without a shadow of truth or probability; they
eulogized in the most glowing language the conduct of the nuns, their
qualifications as teachers, their Christian piety and meekness, and their
careful regard for the morals as well as for the religious scruples of
their pupils. They also attributed the wanton attack upon the nunnery to
the fell spirit of bigotry evoked by the false reports of the New England
press and the unmitigated slanders of the anti-Catholic preachers, and
called upon the legislative authorities to indemnify, in the most ample
manner, the victims of mob law and official connivance.
But the most significant fact brought to light by this committee was
that the fanatics, in their attack on Mt. St. Benedict, were not a mere
heterogeneous crowd of ignorant men acting upon momentary impulse, but
a regular band of lawless miscreants directed and aided by persons
of influence and standing in society. “There is no doubt,” says the
report, “that a conspiracy had been formed, extending into many of the
neighboring towns; but the committee are of opinion that it embraced
very few of respectable character in society, though some such may,
perhaps, be actually guilty of an offence no less heinous, morally
considered, in having excited the feelings which led to the design,
or countenanced and instigated those engaged in its execution.” Here
we find laid down, on the most unquestionable authority, the origin
and birth-place of all subsequent Native American movements against
Catholicity.
But the sequel to the destruction of the Charlestown convent was
even more shameful than the crime itself. Thirteen men had been
arrested, eight of whom were charged with arson. The first tried was
the ringleader, an ex-convict, named Buzzell. The scenes which were
enacted on that occasion are without a parallel in the annals of our
jurisprudence. The mother-superior, several of the sisters, and Bishop
Fenwick, necessary witnesses for the prosecution, were received in court
with half-suppressed jibes and sneers, subjected to every species of
insult by the lawyers for the defence, and were frowned upon even by
the judge who presided. Though the evidence against the prisoner was
conclusive, the jury, without shame or hesitation, acquitted him, and he
walked out of court amid the wildest cheers of the bystanders. Similar
demonstrations of popular sympathy attended the trials of the other
rioters, who were all, with the exception of a young boy, permitted to
escape the penalty of their gross crimes.
Even the State legislature, though urged to do so by many of the leading
public men of the commonwealth, refused to vote anything like an adequate
sum to indemnify the nuns and pupils for their losses, amounting to over
a hundred thousand dollars. The pitiful sum of ten thousand dollars was
offered, and of course rejected; and to this day the ruins of the convent
stand as an eloquent monument of Protestant perfidy and puritanical
meanness and injustice.
The impunity thus legally and officially guaranteed to mobs and
sacrilegious plunderers soon bore fruit in other acts of lawlessness
in various parts of Massachusetts. A Catholic graveyard in Lowell was
shortly after entered and desecrated by an armed rabble, and a house
in Wareham, in which Mass was being celebrated, was set upon by a gang
of ruffians known as the “Convent Boys.” A couple of years later the
Montgomery Guards, a regular militia company, composed principally of
Catholic freeholders of Boston, were openly insulted by their comrades on
parade, and actually stoned through the streets by a mob of over three
thousand persons.
As there were no more convents to be plundered and burned in the
stronghold of Puritanism, the war on those glories of religion was kept
up in a different manner, but with no less rancor and audacity. Taking
advantage of the excitement created by such men as Lyman Beecher and
Buzzell, a mercenary publisher issued a book entitled _Six Months in
a Convent_, which was put together by some contemptible preacher in
the name of an illiterate girl named Reed, who, the better to mislead
the public, assumed the title of “Sister Mary Agnes.” “We earnestly
hope and believe,” said the preface to this embodiment of falsehood,
“that this little work, if universally diffused, will do more, by its
unaffected simplicity, in deterring Protestant parents from educating
their daughters in Catholic nunneries than could the most labored and
learned discourses on the dangers of Popery.” Though the book was
replete with stupid fabrications and silly blunders, so grossly had
the popular taste been perverted that fifty thousand copies were sold
within a year after its publication. The demand was still increasing,
when another contribution to Protestant literature appeared, before the
broad, disgusting, and obscene fabrications of which the mendacity of
“Sister Mary Agnes” paled its ineffectual fires. This latter candidate
for popular favor, though it bore the name, destined for an immortality
of infamy, of Maria Monk--a notoriously dissolute woman--was actually
compiled by a few needy and unscrupulous adventurers, reverend and
irreverend, who found a distinguished Methodist publishing house, not
quite so needy, though still more unscrupulous, to publish the work for
them, though very shame compelled even them to withhold their names from
the publication. And it was only owing to a legal suit arising from this
infamous transaction many years after that the fact was revealed that the
publishers of this vilest of assaults on one of the holiest institutions
of the Catholic Church was the firm of Harper Brothers. True to their
character, they saw that the times were favorable for an assault on
Catholicity, even so vile as this one; and true to their nature again,
they refused to their wretched accomplice her adequate share in the wages
of sin. Though bearing on its face all the evidences of diabolical malice
and falsehood, condemned by the better portion of the press and by all
reputable Protestants, the work had an unparalleled sale for some time.
The demand might have continued to go on increasing indefinitely, but,
in an evil hour for the speculators, its authors, under the impression
that the prurient taste of the public was not sufficiently satiated with
imaginary horrors, issued a continuation under the title of _Additional
Awful Disclosures_. This composition proved an efficient antidote to
the malignant poison of the first. Its impurity and falsehoods were so
palpable that its originators were glad to slink into obscurity and their
patrons into silence, followed by the contempt of all honest men.
Just ten years after the Charlestown outrage the spirit of Protestant
persecution began to revive. Premonitory symptoms of political
proscription appeared in 1842, in the constitutional conventions of Rhode
Island and Louisiana, and in the local legislatures of other States; but
it was not till the early part of 1844 that it became evident that secret
measures were being taken to arouse the dormant feeling of antipathy to
the rights of Catholics, so rife in the hearts of the ignorant Protestant
masses. New York, at first, was the principal seat of the disorder.
Most of the newspapers of that period teemed with eulogistic reviews of
books written against the faith; cheap periodicals, such as the Rev. Mr.
Sparry’s _American Anti-Papist_, were thrust into the hands of all who
would read them by the agents of the Bible and proselytizing societies;
and a cohort of what were called anti-papal lecturers, of which a
reverend individual named Cheever was the leader, was employed to attack
the Catholic Church with every conceivable weapon that the arsenal of
Protestantism afforded.
The popular mind being thus prepared for a change, the various elements
of political and social life opposed to Catholicity were crystallized
into the “American Republican” party, better known as the Native
Americans. On the 19th of March, 1844, the new faction nominated James
Harper for mayor of the city of New York, and about the same time William
Rockwell was named for a similar office in Brooklyn. The platform upon
which these gentlemen stood was simple but comprehensive: the retention
of the Protestant Bible and Protestant books in the public schools;
the exclusion of Catholics of all nationalities from office; and the
amendment of the naturalization laws so as to extend the probationary
term of citizenship to twenty-one years. The canvass in New York was
conducted with some regard to decency; but in the sister city, the
Nativists threw off all respect for law, their processions invaded the
districts inhabited mainly by adopted citizens, assailed all who did
not sympathize with them, and riot and bloodshed were the consequence.
In Brooklyn the Nativist candidate was defeated, but Harper was elected
triumphantly by about twenty-four thousand votes. The ballots that placed
such a man at the head of the municipality of the American metropolis
were deposited by both Whigs and Democrats, though each party had a
candidate in the field. The former contributed upwards of fourteen
thousand, or three-fourths of their strength; their opponents somewhat
less than ten thousand.
But the action of the city politicians was quickly repudiated and
condemned throughout the State. On the 13th of April the Whigs assembled
in Albany and passed a series of resolutions denouncing in unequivocal
terms the tenets of the Native Americans; and in two days after, at the
same place, and in, if possible, a more forcible manner, the Democracy
entered their protest against the heresies and evil tendencies of the
persecuting faction. Still, the “American Republicans” showed such
signs of popular strength in various municipal elections that year
that the lower classes of politicians, of all shades of opinion, who
dared not openly support them, were suspected of secretly courting
their friendship. The nomination of Frelinghuysen with Henry Clay at
the Whig presidential convention of May 1, 1844, was well understood at
the time to be a bid for Nativist support, and eventually defeated the
distinguished Kentucky orator.
It is difficult to imagine how far the madness of the hour might have
carried ambitious political leaders and timid conventions, had not the
scenes of sacrilege and murder which soon after disgraced the city of
Philadelphia, and stained its streets with innocent blood, sent a thrill
of horror throughout the entire country.
Philadelphia had followed, if not anticipated, the example of New York
in sowing broadcast the seeds of civil strife. Early in the year secret
Nativist societies were formed; sensational preachers like Tyng, in and
out of place, harangued congregations and meetings; cheap newspapers were
started for the sole purpose of vilifying Catholics and working upon the
baser passions of the sectarian population of the country. The motives
of those engineers of discord were the same as those of their New York
brethren, and their method of attack equally treacherous and cowardly.
One of the principal charges against their Catholic fellow-citizens was
that they were hostile to free schools and education generally. To this
unjust aspersion Bishop Kenrick, on the 12th of March, publicly replied
in a short but lucid letter, in which he said:
“Catholics have not asked that the Bible be excluded from the public
schools. They have merely desired for their children the liberty of using
the Catholic version, in case the reading of the Bible be prescribed by
the controllers or directors of the schools. They only desire to enjoy
the benefit of the constitution of the State of Pennsylvania, which
guarantees the rights of conscience and precludes any preference of
sectarian modes of worship. They ask that the school laws be faithfully
executed, and that the religious predilections of the parents be
respected.… They desire that the public schools be preserved from all
sectarian influence, and that education be conducted in a way that may
enable all citizens equally to share its benefits, without any violence
being offered to their conscientious convictions.”
So deliberate and emphatic a denial had no effect on the wretched men who
tyrannized over the second city in the Union, except that it was resolved
to substitute brute force for reason, and to precipitate a collision
with their comparatively weak victims. Accordingly, on the 5th of May, a
Nativist meeting was held in Kensington. The design of the managers of
the meeting was evidently to provoke an attack; for, finding the place
first selected for the gathering unmolested, they deliberately moved to
the market-house, in the actual presence of several adopted citizens.
This trick and the insulting speeches that followed had the desired
effect. A riot took place, several shots were fired on both sides, and
four or five persons were more or less seriously wounded. The Nativists
retreated, and made an unsuccessful attempt to burn a nunnery.
The most exaggerated reports of this affair were immediately circulated
through Philadelphia. The next day the Nativists, fully armed, assembled
and passed a series of resolutions of the most violent character.
Preceded by an American flag, which bore an inscription as malicious as
it was untrue, they attacked the Hibernian Hose Company, destroyed the
apparatus, and broke the fire-bell in pieces. Twenty-nine dwellings were
burned to the ground, their hapless occupants, mostly women and children,
fleeing in all directions amid the insults and shots of their savage
assailants. The citizens were now thoroughly aroused, the military, under
Gen. Cadwalader, was called out, and Bishop Kenrick addressed a public
admonition to his flock to preserve peace, and, notwithstanding the
provocation, to exercise forbearance. But the demon of fanaticism, once
let loose, could not be easily laid. Rioting continued throughout the day
and far into the night. Early on Wednesday morning S. Michael’s Church,
the female seminary attached to it, and a number of private houses in the
neighborhood were ruthlessly plundered and destroyed. “During the burning
of the church,” said one of the Philadelphia papers, “the mob continued
to shout; and when the cross at the peak of the roof fell, they gave
three cheers and a drum and fife played the ‘Boyne Water.’”
The burning of S. Augustine’s Church took place on the evening of the
same day. This building, one of the finest in the city, was peculiarly
endeared to the Catholic inhabitants as having been one of their oldest
churches in Philadelphia. Many of the contributors to its building fund
were men of historic fame, such as Washington, Montgomery, Barry, Meade,
Carey, and Girard. It had adjoining it extensive school-houses and a
commodious parsonage, and the clock in its tower was the one which had
struck the first tones of new-born American liberty. But the sacred
character of the building itself, and the patriotic memories which
surrounded it, could not save it from the torch of the Philadelphia mob.
“The clock struck ten,” wrote an eye-witness, “while the fire was raging
with the greatest fury. At twenty minutes past ten the cross which
surmounted the steeple, and which remained unhurt, fell with a loud
crash, amid the plaudits of a large portion of the spectators.” A very
valuable library and several splendid paintings shared the fate of the
church.
But bad as was the conduct of the rioters, that of the authorities was
even worse. The militia, when ordered out, did not muster for several
hours after the time appointed, and when they did arrive they were only
passive, if not gratified, spectators of the lawless scenes before them.
When S. Michael’s was threatened, the pastor, Rev. Mr. Donohue, placed
it under the charge of Capt. Fairlamb, giving him the keys; yet the mob
was allowed to wreak its vengeance on it undisturbed. The basement of
S. Augustine’s was occupied by some armed men who had resolved to defend
it at all hazards; but on the assurance of Mayor Scott and the sheriff
that they had troops and police enough to protect it, it was agreed, in
the interests of peace, to evacuate it. This had scarcely been done when
the militia and civic guard fell back before a thousand or more armed
ruffians and left the church to its fate. For nearly sixty hours the
rioters were left in undisputed possession of the city; everything the
Catholics held sacred was violated; men were dragged out of their homes,
half-hanged and brutally maltreated, when not murdered outright; the
houses of adopted citizens were everywhere plundered, an immense amount
of property was destroyed, and over two hundred families left desolate
and homeless, without the slightest attempt being made to enforce the
law. How many fell victims to Nativist hate and rage on this occasion has
never been known, but the killed and wounded were counted by scores.
An attempt to outrival Philadelphia in atrocity was made in New York
a few days after, but the precautionary steps of the authorities, the
firm attitude assumed by the late Archbishop Hughes, and the resolute
stand taken by the Catholic population, headed by Eugene Casserly--who
was at that time editor of the _Freeman’s Journal_--together with some
young Irish-American Catholic gentlemen, so impressed the leaders of
the Nativists that all attempts of an incendiary nature, and all public
efforts to sympathize with the Philadelphia mob, were abandoned. Nativism
staggered under the blow given it by its adherents in Philadelphia, and
soon sank into utter insignificance as a political power.
Another decade, however, passed, and we find it again rejuvenated.
This time it assumed the name of the Know-nothing party, and extended
its ramifications through every State in the Union. Its declaration of
principles contained sixteen clauses, as laid down by its organs, of
which the following were regarded as the most vital: 1st. The repeal of
all naturalization laws. 2d. None but native Americans for office. 3d.
A Protestant common-school system. 4th. Perpetual war on “Romanism.”
5th. Opposition to the formation of military companies composed of
“foreigners.” 6th. Stringent laws against immigration. 7th. Ample
protection to Protestant interests. Though partly directed, apparently,
against all persons of foreign birth, this new secret society was
actually only opposed to Catholics; for many of the prominent members
in its lodges were Irish Orangemen and Welsh, Scotch, and English
unnaturalized adventurers who professed no form of belief.
Like their predecessors of 1844, the Know-nothings employed a host of
mendacious ministers and subsidized a number of obscure newspapers to
circulate their slanders against Catholics, native as well as adopted
citizens; but they also added a new feature to the crusade against
morality and civil rights. This was street-preaching--a device for
creating riots and bloodshed, for provoking quarrels and setting neighbor
against neighbor, worthy the fiend of darkness himself. Wretched
creatures, drawn from the very dregs of society, were hired to travel
from town to town, to post themselves at conspicuous street-corners,
if possible before Catholic churches, and to pour forth, in ribald and
blasphemous language, the most unheard-of slanders against the church.
As those outcasts generally attracted a crowd of idle persons, and were
usually sustained by the presence of the members of the local lodge, the
merest interruption of their foul diatribes was the signal for a riot,
ending not unfrequently in loss of life or limb.
The first outrage that marked the career of the Know-nothings of 1854
was the attack on the Convent of Mercy, Providence, R. L., in April of
that year. Instigated by the newspaper attacks of a notorious criminal,
who then figured as a Nativist leader, the rowdy elements of that
usually quiet city surrounded the convent, pelted the doors and windows
with stones, to the great alarm of the ladies and pupils within, and
would doubtless have proceeded to extremities were it not that the
Catholics, fearing a repetition of the Charlestown affair, rallied for
its protection and repeatedly drove them off. In June Brooklyn was the
scene of some street-preaching riots, but in the following August St.
Louis, founded by Catholics and up to that time enjoying an enviable
reputation for refinement and love of order, acquired a pre-eminence in
the Southwest for ferocious bigotry. For two days, August 7 and 8, riot
reigned supreme in that city; ten persons were shot down in the streets,
many more were seriously wounded, and a number of the houses of Catholics
were wrecked.
On the 3d of September of the same year the American Protestant
Association of New York, an auxiliary of the Know-nothings, composed
of Orangemen, went to Newark, N. J., to join with similar lodges of New
Jersey in some celebration. In marching through the streets of that
city they happened to pass the German Catholic church, and, being in a
sportive mood, they did not hesitate to attack it. A _mêlée_ occurred,
during which one man, a Catholic, was killed and several were seriously
injured. The evidence taken by the coroner’s jury showed that the
admirers of King William were well armed, generally intoxicated, and that
the assault and partial destruction of the church were altogether wanton
and unprovoked. Early in the same month news was received of a succession
of riots in New Orleans, the victims, as usual, being Catholics.
But the spirit of terrorism was not confined to one section or particular
State. The virus of bigotry had inoculated the whole body politic. In
October people of all shades of religious opinion were astounded to hear
from Maine that the Rev. John Bapst, S. J., a clergyman of exemplary
piety and mildness, had actually been dragged forcibly from the house
of a friend by a drunken Ellsworth mob, ridden on a rail, stripped
naked, tarred and feathered, and left for dead. His money and watch were
likewise stolen by the miscreants. Father Bapst’s crime was that, when
a resident of Ellsworth some time previously, he had entered into a
controversy about public schools.
Yet, in the face of all these lawless proceedings, the Know-nothing
party increased with amazing rapidity. “Without presses, without
electioneering,” said the New York _Times_, “with no prestige or power,
it has completely overthrown and swamped the two old historic parties
of the country.” This was certainly true of New England, and notably
so of Massachusetts, where, in the autumn of 1854, the Know-nothings
elected their candidate for governor and nearly every member of the
legislature. In the State of New York Ullman, the standard-bearer of
the new army of persecution, received over 122,000 votes, and, though
defeated in the city, it was more than suspected that the Democrat who
was chosen as mayor had been a member of the organization. In many other
States and cities the power of the sworn secret combination was felt and
acknowledged.
Its influence and unseen grasp on the passions and prejudices of the
lower classes of Protestants were plainly perceptible in the halls of
Congress and in the executive cabinet. In the Senate William H. Seward
was the first and foremost to denounce the so-called American party. As
early as July, 1854, in a speech on the Homestead Bill, he took occasion
to remark:
“It is sufficient for me to say that, in my judgment, everything is
un-American which makes a distinction, of whatever kind, in this country
between the native-born American and him whose lot is directed to be cast
here by an over-ruling Providence, and who renounces his allegiance to a
foreign land and swears fealty to the country which adopts him.”
The example of the great statesman was followed by such men as Douglas,
Cass, Keitt, Chandler, and Seymour, while Senators Dayton and Houston,
Wilson, the late Vice-President, N. P. Banks, and a number of other
politicians championed the cause of intolerance as has since been
confessed, for their own selfish aggrandizement as much as from inherent
littleness of soul.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts was completely controlled by the Know-nothings.
Their governor, Gardiner, had not been well in the chair of state when
he disbanded all the Irish military companies within his jurisdiction.
These were the Columbian, Webster, Shields, and Sarsfield Guards of
Boston, the Jackson Musketeers of Lowell, the Union Guard of Lawrence,
and the Jackson Guard of Worcester. The General Court, too, not to be
outdone in bigotry by the executive, passed a law for the inspection of
nunneries, convents, and schools, and appointed a committee to carry
out its provisions. The first--and last--domiciliary visit of this body
was made to the school of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Roxbury. It is
thus graphically described by the Boston _Advertiser_, an eminently
Protestant authority: “The gentlemen--we presume we must call members of
the legislature by this name--roamed over the whole house from attic to
cellar. No chamber, no passage, no closet, no cupboard, escaped their
vigilant search. No part of the house was enough protected by respect for
the common courtesies of civilized life to be spared in the examination.
The ladies’ dresses hanging in their wardrobes were tossed over. The
party invaded the chapel, and showed their respect--as Protestants, we
presume--for the One God whom all Christians worship by talking loudly
with their hats on; while the ladies shrank in terror at the desecration
of a spot which they believed hallowed.”
Still, the work of proscription and outrage went on in other directions.
Fifteen school-teachers had been dismissed in Philadelphia because
they were Catholics; the Rev. F. Nachon, of Mobile, was assaulted and
nearly killed while pursuing his sacred avocations; a military company
in Cincinnati, and another in Milwaukee, composed of adopted citizens,
were disbanded, and on the 6th and 7th of August, 1855, the streets of
Louisville ran red with the blood of adopted citizens. In this last and
culminating Know-nothing outrage eleven hundred voters were driven from
the polls, numbers of men, and even women, were shot down in the public
thoroughfares, houses were sacked and burned, and at least five persons
are known to have been literally roasted alive.
A reaction, however, had already set in. Men of moderate views and
unbiassed judgments began to tire of the scenes of strife, murder, and
rapine that accompanied the victories of the Know-nothings. The first
to deal it a deadly blow, as a political body, was Henry A. Wise, of
Virginia, in his noble canvass of that State against the combined Whig
and Nativist elements in 1855; and to the late Archbishop of New York,
in his utter discomfiture of State Senator Brooks, is justly due the
merit of having first convinced the American people that the so-called
American party was actually the most dangerous enemy of American laws and
institutions, the advocate of spoliation and persecution under the guise
of patriotism and reform.
The decline of Nativism, though not so rapid as its growth, was equally
significant, and its history as instructive. In 1856 a national
convention was called by the wreck of the party to nominate Fillmore for
the presidency, after overtures had been made in vain to the Republicans
and Democrats. Fillmore was so badly defeated that he retired into
private life and lost whatever little fame he had acquired in national
affairs as Taylor’s successor. Four years later Bell and Everett appeared
on the Know-nothing ticket, but so far behind were they in the race with
their presidential competitors that very few persons cared to remember
the paucity of their votes. Gradually, silently, but steadily, like
vermin from a sinking ship, the leaders slunk away from the already
doomed faction, and, by a hypocritical display of zeal, endeavored to
obtain recognition in one or other of the great parties, but generally
without success. Disappointed ambition, impotent rage, and, let us hope,
remorse of conscience occasionally seized upon them, and the charity of
silence became to them the most desired of blessings. Perhaps if the late
civil war had not occurred, to swallow in the immensity of its operations
all minor interests, we might have beheld in 1864 the spectre of Nativism
arising from its uneasy slumber, to be again subjected to its periodical
blights and curses.
From present appearances many far-seeing persons apprehend the recurrence
in this year of the wild exhibitions of anti-Catholic and anti-American
fanaticism which have so often blotted and blurred the otherwise
stainless pages of our short history; that the centennial year of
American independence and republican liberty is to be signalized by a
more concerted, better organized, and more ramified attack on the great
principles of civil and religious freedom which underlie and sustain
the fabric of our government. We trust, sincerely hope, that these men
are mistaken. But if such is to be the case; if we Catholics are doomed
once more to be subjected to the abuse of the vile, the slander of the
hireling, and the violence of an armed mob, the sooner we are prepared
for the contingency the better. If the scenes which have indelibly
disgraced Boston and Philadelphia, Ellsworth and Louisville, are to be
again rehearsed by the half-dozen sworn secret societies whose cabalistic
letters disfigure the columns of so many of our newspapers, we must be
prepared to meet the danger with firmness and composure. As Catholics,
demanding nothing but what is justly our due under the laws, our position
will ever be one of forbearance, charity, and conciliation; but as
American citizens, proud of our country and zealous for the maintenance
of her institutions, our place shall be beside the executors of those
grand enactments which have made this republic the paragon and exemplar
of all civil and natural virtues, no matter how imminent the danger or
how great the sacrifice. In lands less favored Catholic rights may be
violated by prince or mob with impunity, but we would be unworthy of
our country and of its founders were we to shrink for a moment from the
performance of our trust as the custodians of the fundamental ordinance
which guarantees full and absolute religious liberty to all citizens of
the republic.
LOUISE LATEAU BEFORE THE BELGIAN ROYAL ACADEMY OF MEDICINE.[260]
I.
How is the name of Louise Lateau to be mentioned without immediately
calling up all the tumulta which that name has provoked? Books of science
and philosophy, official reports, academic discourses, reports of visits,
_feuilletons_, conferences, pamphlets, articles in journals, every kind
of literary production has been placed under contribution to keep the
public informed about the _stigmatisée_ of Bois d’Haine. For a year,
however, these studies have betaken themselves to a region that might be
called exclusively scientific, and have even received a kind of official
consecration from the recent vote of the Royal Academy of Medicine.
It may be of service to the reader who cannot occupy himself with
special studies to give a brief exposition of the affair of Bois d’Haine
in itself, to show the different interpretations of it that have been
attempted, and to indicate clearly the actual phase of the question from
a scientific point of view.
As early as about the middle of 1868 vague rumors were heard of strange
events which were taking place in a little village of Hainault. Every
Friday a young girl showed on the different portions of her body
corresponding to the wounds of our Saviour Jesus Christ red stains from
which blood flowed in greater or less abundance. It was also said that on
every Friday this young girl, ravished in ecstasy, remained for several
hours completely unconscious of all that was passing around her. Such
were the principal facts. Over and above these rumor spread the story of
certain accessory incidents, some of which, though true, were distorted,
while others were pure fancy. Thanks to the daily press, the young girl
soon became known to the general public, and the name of Louise Lateau
passed from mouth to mouth. Here and there one read among “current
events” that large crowds rushed from all sides, from Belgium and from
without, to assist every Friday at the scenes which were being enacted in
the chamber at Bois d’Haine. Some journals profited by the occasion to
deliver themselves anew of declamations against “Catholic superstitions,
the stupidity of the masses, and the intriguing character of the clergy”;
while even many men of good faith were of opinion that the story told of
Louise Lateau might indeed be true, but ought to be attributed to some
trickery or another of which either the girl or her family was culpable.
Happily for the public, a light came to clear up this chaos of versions,
suppositions, and diverse and contradictory opinions. The _Revue
Catholique_ of Louvain reproduced by instalments, beginning in 1869, a
study by Prof. Lefebvre on these extraordinary events. Some time after,
this study appeared in the form of a volume. Here is how the eminent
physician expresses himself on the origin of his study:
“The story told by the first witnesses of these extraordinary
events produced a lively emotion in the public mind, and soon
crowds assembled every week around the humble house which was
their theatre. The ecclesiastical authorities took up the
facts. This was their right and duty. From the very beginning
they recognized that the different elements of the question
ought to pass through the crucible of science. The periodic
hemorrhage and the suspension of the exercise of the senses
were within the competence of physicians. I was asked to study
them, the desire being expressed that the examination of these
facts should be of the most thorough description, and that they
should not be allowed to escape any one of the exigencies and
severities of modern science.… I deemed it right, therefore,
to accept the mission which was offered me. As a physician, I
was only asked for what I could give--that is to say, a purely
medical study of the facts.”[261]
After having examined the events of Bois d’Haine in all their phases;
after having put to the proof the sincerity of the young girl in a
thousand different ways and by means of a variety of tests, the eminent
Louvain professor pronounced the facts of the stigmatization and ecstasy
to be real and free from deception. Passing, then, to the interpretation
of the events themselves, the author thus concludes:
“Studying first the question of hemorrhage, I have demonstrated
that the periodic bleedings of Louise Lateau belong to no
species of hemorrhage admitted in the regular range of science;
that they cannot be assimilated to any of the extraordinary
cases recorded in the annals of medicine; that, in fine, the
laws of physiology do not afford an explanation of their
genesis. Coming next to the question of ecstasy, I have
carefully gone over the characters of the standard nervous
affections which could offer certain traits of a resemblance,
however remote, to the ecstasy of Louise Lateau, and I believe
I have demonstrated that it is impossible to connect it with
any of the nervous affections known to-day. I have penetrated
the domain of occult sciences; those dark doctrines have
furnished us with no more data for an interpretation of the
events of Bois d’Haine than the free sciences which expand in
the full light of day.”
I do not hesitate to say that the appearance of this book was a
veritable event, and that it marked an important halting-place in the
study of the question of Louise Lateau. By those who knew the calm and
reflective spirit of M. Lefebvre, and the independence of his character
and convictions, the fact of the real existence of the extraordinary
events taking place at Bois d’Haine was no longer called in question;
and if some doubt still remained, it regarded only the sense in which
those events were to be interpreted. Was it, then, true that the union of
stigmata and ecstasies belonged to no known malady? Was it true that they
could find no place in the classification of diseases, under a new title,
with physiological proofs to accompany them?
Notwithstanding the immense credit allowed to the science of M. Lefebvre,
doubt still hovered around this question, and I make bold to say, in the
honor of the progress of science, that such doubt was legitimate. A loyal
appeal was made to the _savants_ of the country and of foreign countries,
urging them to go and study the facts at Bois d’Haine and publish their
opinion. Soon a study on Louise Lateau, made by a French physician,[262]
came to confirm still further the medical study of M. Lefebvre. Then a
German _savant_, M. Virchow, seemed to accept as true the conclusions of
the Belgian doctor by that famous phrase that the events of Bois d’Haine
must be considered either as a trick or as a miracle.
Meanwhile, certain persons seemed still reluctant to accept facts
which a hundred different witnesses affirmed in the face of the world.
Among the reluctant are to be ranked, first of all, those who are of
bad faith--with whom there is no reason to trouble; others who, for
philosophic motives, seemed to accuse the witnesses of those scenes
of sacrificing the interest of science to that of their religious
convictions. Nevertheless, M. Lefebvre’s book continued to make headway.
I do not say that it did not meet with some attacks here and there, and
certain objections in detail; but throughout the country no publication
of any pretension to seriousness affected either to deny the facts or to
give a natural explanation of them. This state of things continued up
to July, 1874. At this epoch Dr. Charbonnier, a physician of Brussels,
presented to the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine a work entitled
_Maladies et facultés diverses des mystiques. Louise Lateau._
M. Boëns, on his part, submitted to the same learned body, in the session
of October 3, 1874, a new production, entitled _Louise Lateau, ou les
mystères de Bois d’Haine dévoilés_.
II.
The events of Bois d’Haine continued to occupy public attention.
The scenes of the stigmatic flows of blood and of the ecstasies were
presented every Friday. It was even stated that from the middle of 1871
Louise Lateau had taken no sort of nourishment. The Belgian Royal Academy
of Medicine, whether because it dreaded to enter upon a question which
involved, beyond the scientific side, a side purely philosophic, or
whether also because a fitting and favorable opportunity of taking up
the question of Louise Lateau was not presented, remained mute as to the
events of Bois d’Haine.
The almost simultaneous presentation of two works treating on the very
subject indicated clearly that the question was ripe. Moreover, in the
session of October 3, 1874, the chief medical body of the country,
conformably with usage, appointed a special committee to make a report on
the works read in its sessions. This committee consisted of MM. Fossion,
president; Mascart and Warlomont, colleagues.
The important report of the committee was read in the session of the 13th
of February by M. Warlomont. That gentleman to show how the study of M.
Charbonnier’s work necessitated an examination into the affair at Bois
d’Haine, said:
“Ought the committee to confine itself to examining the
memorial placed before it from the simple point of view of
its absolute scientific value, without occupying itself with
the fact which gives occasion for the memorial? It would be
easier to do so, perhaps, but an opportunity would thus be
neglected of putting the Academy in possession of an actual
medical observation, as complete as possible, relative to a
fact of which, whether we like it or not, the discussion can no
longer be eluded. It assumed, therefore the task of inquiring
into the affair forthwith; resolved, however arduous might be
the mission thus undertaken, to accept it without regret, to
pursue it without weakness as without bias, and to set before
the society such elements as its investigation--one altogether
official--should have procured. This is the trust which, in its
name, I this day fulfil.”[263]
MM. Charbonnier and Boëns were the first in our country who undertook to
find fault with the conclusions of M. Lefebvre’s book, and to explain by
scientific data the events of Bois d’Haine. M. Boëns, almost immediately
after the reading of a portion of his work, withdrew it, and was able
by this means to escape the report of the committee. Was this disdain
for the judgment of his _confrères_ on the part of the distinguished
physician of Charleroi, or was it want of confidence in the solidity of
his own arguments? I know not. I state a fact and continue.
There remained, then, for the committee to examine the work of M.
Charbonnier. This memoir is voluminous. The theory of the author is
substantially as follows: The absence of aliment and the concentration of
the faculties of the soul towards one object have been the primary and
indispensable conditions of ecstasies and stigmata. As far as abstinence
is concerned, it is perfectly compatible, if not with a state of health,
at least with the maintenance of life. “The question of abstinence,” says
the author, “is the most important, because without it nothing happens.
It being well explained, there is no longer anything supernatural in any
of the physiological and pathological phenomena of the mystics.”[264]
But how is this abstinence compatible with life? By the law of the
substitution of functions and organs.
“The organs,” says the author, “are conjointly associated (_solidaires_)
one with another, working for the common health; so that when an organ,
for one cause or another, cannot adequately fulfil its functions, another
immediately supplies its place.”
Supposing all this admitted, here is what the author says of
stigmatization:
“Abstinence and contemplation are the causes of stigmatization:
i. Abstinence, in suppressing the vegetative functions, frees
both the nervous influx and the blood which were distributed
among the digestive organs. 2. Contemplation gathers together
the contingent of pain dispersed through all the body, to fix
and concentrate it on certain points which it sees, admires,
loves, in Jesus Christ. It suppresses all the functions of
the life of relation to devote itself exclusively to the
object of its passion. The bloody flux, which has been drawn
to the surface of the skin by the great functional activity,
follows to the end the nervous influx which is constantly
directed towards certain points, and the stigmatization is
effected.”[265]
Of the ecstasy, according to M. Charbonnier, “abstinence is the
principal, contemplation the secondary, cause.” We cannot, indeed, enter
into all the details furnished by the author of this strange theory. In
order to arrive at a judgment regarding it, we know of nothing better
than to cite the conclusions of the reader of the report on the work
itself:
“All this,” says M. Warlomont, “forms a whole which must have
cost the author long and laborious research. As far as the
inquiries of physiology are concerned, the source, respectable
though it may be, on which he has relied, must be a cause for
regret. His principal, almost his only, authority is that of
Longet, who is now many years dead. But the questions relative
to nutrition--those precisely which are at stake--have, since
Longet, been placed in an absolutely new light. The work which
we have just analyzed is altogether a work of the imagination.
The demonstration of the _à priori_ thesis which the author
has set up he has pursued by every means, clearing out of
his road the obstacles of nature which embarrass it, and
creating at will new functions whereon to apply his organs;
all this written in a lively, imaginative style, and bearing
the impress of conviction. There is only one thing which is
sadly wanting--experimental proof. A few simple experiments on
animals, logically carried out, would have informed him how
they withstand a progressive abstinence, and what changes this
abstinence effects in their organs and functions. It is to be
regretted that he has not instituted these experiments.”[266]
If the theory advanced by M. Charbonnier, based on such doubtful
physiological facts, finds no weight with the learned representative
of the Academy of Medicine, it is not because he himself admits the
conclusions arrived at in the study of M. Lefebvre on Louise Lateau.
For him, indeed, the events taking place at Bois d’Haine, apart from
the question of fasting, which has not been positively established, and
which, on that account, rightly passes beyond scientific discussion,[267]
are exempt from all fraud and deception. But let M. Warlomont himself
speak:
“After having analyzed,” he says, “the memoir which the
Academy has confided to our examination, and having refuted it
principally in the portions which concern Louise Lateau, it
remains for us in our turn to give our own ideas relative to
a fact of such interest which has formed the subject of the
memoir.
“And first of all, are the facts cited real? According to
our thinking, the simulation of the ecstasies is simply
impossible, accompanied as they are by functional troubles the
provocation for which would pass quite beyond the empire of the
will. As for the actual spontaneity of the stigmata, we have
demonstrated this experimentally.”
And now for the chief part of the report. It is that in which the learned
academician attempts to give a physiological explanation of the facts.
For him ecstasies are a species of double life, of a second condition,
such as may be presented in ordinary and extraordinary nervous states, as
well as in others: (_a_) in consequence of material injury to the brain;
(_b_) during the existence of well-determined neurotic disorders; (_c_)
under the influence of certain special appliances (magnetism, hypnotism);
(_d_) spontaneously, without the intervention of any external provocation
(as somnambulism or extraordinary neurotic affections).
After having examined each of these points in detail, the author thus
continues:
“This point established, what of ecstasies? Well, whatever
we may do, it is impossible for us not to class them in the
same order of facts, not to see in them the influence of a
neurotic perturbation analogous to that which controls neurotic
diseases. It is in both cases the passage of a human being into
a state of second condition, characterized by the suspension,
more or less complete, of the exercise of the senses, with a
special concentration of all the cerebral powers towards a
limited object. Among the ecstatics, as among the hypnotics,
there prevails a perturbation, diminution, or abolition of
external sensibility. All is concentrated in a new cerebral
functional department.”
So far for the ecstasies. Passing next to the production of stigmata,
the report admits in principle the theory of Alfred Maury. That is to
say, the imagination plays the principal _rôle_ in the production of
these phenomena. But to meet the brilliant member of the Institute, he
calls to his aid the physiological laws and most recent discoveries,
in order to show how the imagination can, by the irritation of certain
given parts, provoke a veritable congestion of those parts, and then a
hemorrhage.
“In virtue of what mechanism,” he asks, “are blisters first
produced, and bleeding afterwards? We have established the
genesis of stigmatic angiomata.[268] The attention has given
place to pain, and pain to repeated touchings; from this
proceeds the congestion which has brought on the arrest of
the blood in the capillaries, and, as a consequence, their
enlargement. Then comes the rush of blood, giving place to
congestive motions, determined by a hemorrhagic diathesis, and
the phenomena disclose themselves in all their simplicity;
the leucocytes[269] will pass across the capillaries, will
discharge themselves under the skin, and the blister is the
result. The accumulation of blood continuing in proportion to
the enlargement of the capillaries, the fleshly tegument will
end by bursting; then the blood itself, whether by traversing
the channels created by the previous passage of the leucocytes,
or by the rupture of the vessels, the likelihood of which can
be sustained, ends by an external eruption, and the hemorrhage
follows.”
But M. Warlomont goes still farther. He says that not only are stigmata
and ecstasies capable of explanation when taken apart from one another,
but that by their union they constitute what in pathology is called
aggregate of symptoms. According to this, stigmata and ecstasies would
constitute an altogether unique morbid state, to which the professor
gives the following name and definition: “Stigmatic neuropathy is a
nervous disease, having its seat in the base of the _medulla oblongata_,
the first stage of which consists in the paralysis of the vaso-motor
centre, and the second in its excitation.” Presented in this way, the
report of the distinguished member of the Academy was not only a report,
but a veritable original work. Thus this book, wherein the author had
joined loyalty of procedure to elegance of style and deep erudition,
produced a profound sensation. The theory which he advances might
well leave certain doubts with the reader relative to the solidity of
the bases on which it leans, but by its method it exercised a real
fascination on the mind. M. Warlomont’s conclusions were, as far as the
interpretation of the facts went, diametrically opposed to those of the
book which M. Lefebvre had published several years before, and it was not
without a very great curiosity that the public awaited the reply of the
latter.
The reply was not long in coming. M. Lefebvre’s discourse occupied, so
to say, exclusively the sessions of May 29 and June 26. After having
rendered due homage to the courtesy and science of the distinguished
reader of the report, the Louvain professor hesitated not to sustain the
first conclusions advanced in his book, and to demonstrate the small
foundation of the theory of his adversary on this question. It is to be
regretted that the limits at my disposal do not allow me to enter into
all the physiological details and pathological considerations on which
M. Lefebvre builds his conclusions. I regret it the more because the
brilliant words of the orator exercise a very special impression by the
clearness of their exposition, the logic of their reasoning, and the
exquisite charm which they give to even the driest questions.
First, as to the stigmatic hemorrhages, we cannot be astonished, after
having followed the proofs which the learned orator gives us, to find him
lay down the following conclusions:
“1. M. Warlomont is driven to admit a single vaso-motor centre;
the most recent researches are against this localization: the
vaso-motor centres are several and disseminated.
“2. The distinguished reader of the report constructs his
doctrine of the action of the imagination on a series of
hypotheses.
“The two chief ones are: that the imagination has the power,
every Friday morning, of completely paralyzing the vaso-motor
centre and the vaso-constrictor nerves; and after midday,
by a contradictory action, to excite violently this centre,
and consequently to close up the vaso-constrictors--pure
suppositions which have not only not been demonstrated by the
author, but which seem to me absolutely anti-physiological.
“3. Even admitting these hypotheses as well founded, it is an
established fact that the complete paralysis of the vaso-motor
centres and of the vaso-constrictor nerves is never followed
by bleeding on the surface of the skin; the experience of all
physiologists agrees on this point.
“4. This experience proves, on the contrary, that in such cases
there are sometimes produced suffusions of blood in the mucous
membranes; such suffusions never show themselves in Louise
Lateau.
“5. A series of hypotheses still more complicated than those
laid down as premises by the distinguished reader of the report
might be conceded--to wit, the paralysis of the arteries and
the simultaneous constriction of the veins. Experiment again
proves that even under these conditions bleeding on the surface
of the skin is not produced.
“6. M. Warlomont, in parting from the hypotheses which I
have just combated, admits that the bleeding produced by the
influence of the imagination is a bleeding by transudation.
But the characteristics of transudation, studied in the light
of modern physiology, are completely opposed to those of the
stigmatic bleeding of Louise Lateau.
“7. Finally--and this argument alone will suffice to overthrow
the thesis of the distinguished reader of the report--clinical
observation, in accordance with physiological induction, proves
that in circumstances where the imagination exercises its
greatest violence it never produces bleeding on the surface of
the skin.”
Regarding ecstasies, the orator, after having examined the different
states with which the reader of the report to the Academy compared the
ecstasies of Louise Lateau, concludes by saying:
“I believe I have demonstrated that the analysis of second
conditions, brought out with so much skill by the distinguished
gentleman, does not give the key to the ecstasy of Louise
Lateau. But, setting aside these states of nervous disease,
should not the imagination be made to bear all the burden of
the ecstasy, as it does of the stigmatization?”
After examining this question, the orator concludes in the negative. In
finishing his beautiful discourse he says:
“Our honorable colleague, in studying the causes of the
stigmatization and ecstasy, has given to them a physiological
interpretation. On this ground I have separated from him, and
I believe I have demonstrated that that interpretation is not
only insufficient, but also erroneous. I believed for a moment
that M. Warlomont was about to offer an acceptable scientific
theory. I do not say a theory complete and adequate--I am
not so exacting; I know too well that we do not know the all
of anything. If our eminent colleague had proposed to us a
physiological interpretation, satisfying the most moderate
demands of science, I should have accepted it, not with
resignation, but with joy and eagerness; and believe me,
gentlemen, my religious convictions would have suffered no
shock thereby.
“Our learned colleague, whom you have charged with examining
the events of Bois d’Haine, has not, then, in my opinion,
given to them their physiological interpretation. Other
physicians have attempted the same task; I name two of them,
because their works have been produced within these walls.
“First of all, Dr. Boëns. In withdrawing his memoir from the
order of the day of the Academy, he has withdrawn it from
our discussion. Nevertheless, I believe I am not severe in
affirming that the considerations which claimed his attention,
and the irony of which he has been so prodigal in my own
regard, have thrown but little light on the events of Bois
d’Haine. Dr. Charbonnier has submitted to your appreciation a
work of a more scientific character. M. Warlomont has examined
it with the attention which it deserves, and has refuted it. I
am thus dispensed from returning to it.
“I maintain, then, purely and simply, the conclusions of my
study: The stigmatization and the ecstasies of Louise Lateau
are real and true facts, and science has not furnished their
physiological interpretation.”
M. Crocq spoke after M. Lefebvre. Like M. Warlomont, the learned Brussels
professor believes that the interpretation of the facts positively
established about Louise Lateau belongs to pathological physiology. The
theory of M. Crocq differs but little from that of M. Warlomont. He
attaches more importance to abstinence than the learned reader of the
report, and thus comes nearer to M. Charbonnier; he believes, also, that
the bleeding is altogether caused by a rupture of the capillaries. Apart
from these small distinctions, it may be said of him, as of M. Warlomont,
that he is of opinion that the imagination, by its influence on the
nervous system, is the principal cause of the ecstasies and stigmata.
Here are the rest of his conclusions:
“I. The state of Louise Lateau is a complex pathological state,
characterized by the following facts:
“1. Anæmia and weakness of constitution, arising from
privations endured since childhood.
“2. Nervous exaltation produced by anæmia and directed in a
determined sense by the education and religious tendencies of
Louise.
“3. Ecstasies constituting the supreme degree of this
exaltation.
“4. Bleeding, having for its starting point anæmia and
exaltation of the vaso-motor nervous system.
“5. Relative abstinence, considerably exaggerated by the sick
girl, conformably to what is observed among many persons who
suffer from nervous disorders.
“II. This state offers nothing contrary to the laws of
pathological physiology; it is consequently useless to go
outside of that in search of explanation.
“III. It has the same characteristics as all the analogous
cases related by physicians and historians; mysticism
altogether, save cases of jugglery and mystification, ought to
enter into the province of pathology, which is vast enough to
contain it; and all the phenomena explain themselves perfectly
by taking as starting point the principles which I have laid
down.”
If we had to advance our own opinion on this important question, we
should say that, after the report in which M. Warlomont had treated his
subject with so much method and science, there remained few new arguments
which could be applied to the physiological theory of the phenomena of
mystics. It should be considered, however, no small advantage for the
latter physician to feel himself supported by M. Crocq, who had brought
to the debates the weight of his profound erudition and vast experience.
III.
By all impartial judges the case might be regarded as understood. It
was so in effect. The different orators who succeeded each other in the
tribune of the Academy had brought to their respective discourses the
strongest possible array of facts and of arguments. I shall astonish no
one, then, by saying that M. Warlomont could not allow the victorious
discourse of his colleague of Louvain to pass without some observations.
It is impossible for us here to give a _résumé_ of his discourse. In the
main it added no new proof to the substance of the debate, and confined
itself to the criticism of certain details.
It is enough for us to say that in this discourse the learned reader of
the report to the Academy gave new proof of the brilliancy of his mind
and the adroitness of his gifts.
M. Lefebvre, on his side, felt himself to be too much master of the
situation to need emphasizing his triumph any further. This is what he
did in the session of October 9, 1875. Without precisely entering into
the heart of the debate, he brought out more strongly certain of the
arguments which he had already used; he employed them to refute some of
the assertions made in the discourses of his adversaries, held up certain
inaccuracies, and concluded, as he had the right to do, by the following
words, which give an exact idea of the state of the question:
“Let us resume. M. Warlomont has studied with earnestness and
candor the events of Bois d’Haine. He has stated, as I have
done, the reality of the stigmatization and ecstasy; he has
demonstrated, as I have, that these phenomena are free from any
deception. M. Crocq, after having examined the facts on the
spot, has arrived at the same conclusions. The learned reader
of the committee’s report has built up a scientific theory of
the stigmatization and ecstasy; the eminent Brussels professor
has, in his turn, formulated an interpretation very nearly
approaching to that of M. Warlomont, but which differs from it,
nevertheless, on certain points. I have sought, on my side, a
physiological explanation of these extraordinary facts, and
I have arrived at the conclusion that science could furnish
no satisfactory interpretation of them. I have expounded at
length before the Academy the reasons which prevent me from
accepting the theories of my two honorable opponents; but my
position is perfectly correct. I confine myself to recognizing
my powerlessness to interpret the facts of Bois d’Haine. M.
Warlomont takes another attitude. He pretends that we have a
scientific explanation of these phenomena. We have not one--we
have had three or four; which is the true one? Is it that of M.
Boëns? Is it that of M. Charbonnier, to which, beyond doubt,
you attach some importance, since you have voted that it be
printed? Is it that of the learned reader of your report? Begin
by choosing. As for me, I hold fast to my first conclusions:
The facts of Bois d’Haine have not received a scientific
interpretation.”
After certain remarks made at the same session by MM. Vleminckx, Crocq,
Lefebvre, Masoin, Boëns, the general discussion closed. The printing
of M. Charbonnier’s memoir was decided on and a vote of thanks to the
author passed. With this should have ended the task of the Academy; and
those who had hoped for a physiological interpretation of the facts of
Bois d’Haine, as the outcome of these discussions, were in a position
to felicitate themselves on the result; for by its absolute silence the
Academy allowed a certain freedom of choice.
But during the session of July 10, 1875, which a family affliction
prevented M. Lefebvre from assisting at, two members proposed orders of
the day on the discussion of Bois d’Haine. Nevertheless, by a very proper
sentiment, which the distinguished president, M. Vleminckx, was the first
to advance, those orders of the day were not carried at that date.
That of M. Kuborn was thus conceived:
“The Academy, considering--
“That the phenomena really established about the young girl
of Bois d’Haine are not new and are explicable by the laws of
pathological physiology;
“That the prolonged abstinence which has been argued about has
not been observed by the committee;
“That no supervision, therefore, having been established, and
there having been no chance of establishing it, the proper
thing was not to pause on the consideration of this fact, but
to consider it as not having come up--
“The Academy follows its order of the day as far as concerns
the question of the stigmatization and exstasy.”
Here is the order of the day proposed by M. Crocq:
“The Academy, considering--
“That the phenomena established about Louise Lateau are not
beyond a physiological explanation;
“That those which are not established ought no longer to occupy
our attention--
“Declares the discussion closed, and passes to the order of the
day.”
The same resolutions, the small foundation for which, after the
discourses which had been made, every impartial mind ought to recognize,
were again brought up in the session of October 9.
M. Vleminckx, having induced the authors of the orders of the day to
modify their wording in such a manner as to render them acceptable, M.
Fossion proposed the following form, more soothing than its predecessors:
“The Royal Academy of Medicine declares that the case of Louise
Lateau has not been completely scrutinized and cannot serve
as a base for serious discussion; consequently, it closes the
discussion.”
M. Laussedat, after some preliminary remarks, finally proposed the order
of the day pure and simple, which was adopted.
The bearing of this vote will escape the mind of no one. In setting aside
the orders of the day which pretended that what had been positively
established in the question of Bois d’Haine might be solved by science,
the Academy has fully confirmed the conclusions of M. Lefebvre’s book.
Meanwhile, in ending, let us return to Bois d’Haine, to that young girl
who has become more than ever the object of the veneration of some, the
study of others, and the wonder of all.
Since 1868 Louise Lateau presents the phenomena weekly of the bloody
stigmata and the ecstasies, to which later on was added abstinence from
food.
Her first and chief historian, M. Lefebvre, after having watched the
young girl, affirms since 1869: She, whom a certain portion of the public
considers as a cheat or an invalid, really presents the phenomena which
are reported of her. These phenomena are exempt from trickery, and it is
impossible to explain them by the laws of physiology and pathology. We
omit the question of fasting, which remains to be studied.
Seven years after the appearance of the first phenomena, at the time when
the commotion which they produced had, so to say, reached its height, the
leading learned body in Belgium examined the mysterious scenes in the
humble house of Bois d’Haine, and, through MM. Crocq and Warlomont, made
an inquiry into the reality and sincerity of the facts, and brings in a
verdict that the facts are real and free from all fraud.
Finally, this same Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, by its vote,
avows in the face of the world that, if it ought not to recognize a
supernatural cause in the facts about Louise Lateau, as little can it
demonstrate their natural origin and physiological genesis.
Such is the actual state of this extraordinary question.
ST. JEAN DE LUZ.
“Il s’imagine voir, avec Louis le Grand,
Philip Quatre qui s’avance
Dans l’Ile de la Conférence.”
--_La Fontaine._
Few towns are set in so lovely a frame as St. Jean de Luz, with its
incomparable variety of sea, mountain, river, and plain. In front is the
dark blue bay opening into the boundless sea. On the north are the cliffs
of Sainte Barbe. At the south are the Gothic donjon and massive jetty of
Socoa, behind which rises gradually a chain of mountains, one above the
other, from wooded or vine-covered hills, dotted here and there with the
red-and-white houses of the Basque peasantry and the summer residences
of the wealthy merchants of St. Jean de Luz, till we come to the outer
ramparts of La Rhune with its granite cliffs and sharp peaks, the Trois
Couronnes with their jagged outline, and still farther on a long, blue
line of mountains fading away into the azure sea. It is from La Rhune
you can best take in all the features of the country. To go to it you
use one of the modest barks that have replaced the sumptuous galleys of
Louis Quatorze, and ascend to Ascain, a pretty hamlet, from which the
summit of La Rhune is reached in two hours. It is not one of the highest
in the Pyrenean chain, being only three thousand feet above the sea, but
it is an isolated peak, and affords a diversified view of vast extent. To
the north are the green valleys of Labourd, with the steeples of thirty
parishes around; Bayonne, with the towers of its noble cathedral; and
the vast pine forests of the mysterious Landes. To the west is the coast
of Spain washed by the ocean. East and south are the mountains of Béarn
and Navarre, showing peak after peak, like a sea suddenly petrified in a
storm.
Such is the magnificent frame in which is set the historic town of St.
Jean de Luz. It is built on a tongue of land washed by the encroaching
sea on one hand and the river Nivelle on the other. The situation is
picturesque, the sky brilliant, the climate mild. It seems to need
nothing to make it attractive. The very aspect of decay lends it an
additional charm which renewed prosperity would destroy. The houses run
in long lines parallel with the two shores, looking, when the tide is
high, like so many ships at anchor. At the sight of this floating town
we are not surprised at its past commercial importance, or that its
inhabitants are navigators _par excellence_. Its sailors were the first
to explore the unknown seas of the west, and to fish for the cod and
whale among the icebergs of the arctic zone. In the first half of the
XVIIth century thirty ships, each manned by thirty-five or forty sailors,
left St. Jean de Luz for the cod-fisheries of Newfoundland, and as many
for Spitzbergen in search of whales. The oaks of La Rhune were cut down
for vessels. The town was wealthy and full of activity. Those were
the best days of ancient Lohitzun. But though once so renowned for its
fleets, it has fallen from the rank it then occupied. Ruined by wars, and
greatly depopulated by the current of events, its houses have decayed
one after another, or totally disappeared before the encroachments of
the sea. Reduced to a few quiet streets, it is the mere shadow of what
it once was. Instead of hundreds of vessels, only a fishing-smack or two
enliven its harbor. And yet there is a certain air of grandeur about
the place which bespeaks its past importance, and several houses which
harmonize with its historic memories. For St. Jean de Luz was not only a
place of commercial importance, but was visited by several of the kings
of France, and is associated with some of the most important events of
their reigns. Louis XI. came here when mediating between the kings of
Aragon and Castile. The château of Urtubi, which he occupied, is some
distance beyond. Its fine park, watered by a beautiful stream, and the
picturesque environs, make it an attractive residence quite worthy of
royalty. The ivy-covered wall on the north side is a part of the old
manor-house of the XIIth century; the remainder is of the XVIIth. The
two towers have a feudal aspect, but are totally innocent of feudal
domination; for the Basque lords, even of the middle ages, never had
any other public power than was temporarily conferred on them by their
national assemblies.
It was at St. Jean de Luz that Francis I., enthusiastically welcomed
by the people after his deliverance from captivity in Spain, joyfully
exclaimed: “_Je suis encore roi de France_--I am still King of France!”
It likewise witnessed the exchange of the beautiful Elizabeth of France
and Anne of Austria--one given in marriage to Louis XIII. and the other
to Philip of Spain amid the acclamations of the people.
Cardinal Mazarin also visited St. Jean de Luz in 1659 to confer with
the astute Don Luis de Haro, prime minister of Philip IV., about the
interests of France and Spain. The house he inhabited beside the sea
still has his cipher on the walls, as it has also the old Gobelin
tapestry with which his apartments were hung. He was accompanied by
one hundred and fifty gentlemen, some of whom were the greatest lords
in France. With them were as many attendants, a guard of one hundred
horsemen and three hundred foot-soldiers, twenty-four mules covered with
rich housings, seven carriages for his personal use, and several horses
to ride. He remained here four months. His interviews with the Spanish
minister took place on the little island in the Bidassoa known ever since
as the Isle of Conference, which was never heard of till the treaty of
the Pyrenees. All national interviews and exchanges of princesses had
previously taken place in the middle of the river by means of _gabares_,
or a bridge of boats.
It was this now famous isle which Bossuet apostrophized in his _oraison
funèbre_ at the burial of Queen Marie Thérèse:
“Pacific isle, in which terminated the differences of the two great
empires of which you were the limit; in which were displayed all the
skill and diplomacy of different national policies; in which one
statesman secured preponderance by his deliberation, and the other
ascendency by means of his penetration! Memorable day, in which two
proud nations, so long at enmity, but now reconciled by Marie Thérèse,
advanced to their borders with their kings at their head, not to engage
in battle, but for a friendly embrace; in which two sovereigns with their
courts, each with its peculiar grandeur and magnificence, as well as
etiquette and manners, presented to each other and to the whole universe
so august a spectacle--how can I now mingle your pageants with these
funeral solemnities, or dwell on the height of all human grandeur in
sight of its end?”
The marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, to which the great
orator refers, is still the most glorious remembrance of St. Jean de
Luz. The visits of Louis XI., Francis I., and Charles IX. have left but
few traces in the town compared with that of the _Grand Monarque_. The
majestic presence of the young king surrounded by his gay, magnificent
following, here brought in contrast with the dignity, gloom, and splendor
of the Spanish court, impressed the imagination of the people, who have
never forgotten so glorious a memory.
Louis XIV. arrived at St. Jean de Luz May 8, 1660, accompanied by Anne of
Austria, Cardinal Mazarin, and a vast number of lords and ladies, among
whom was the _Grande Mademoiselle_. They were enthusiastically welcomed
by the ringing of bells, firing of cannon, and shouts of joy. Garlands of
flowers arched the highway, the pavement was strewn with green leaves,
and Cantabrian dances were performed around the cortége. At the door of
the parish church stood the clergy in full canonicals, with the _curé_
at their head to bless the king as he went past. He resided, while
there, in the château of Lohobiague, the fine towers of which are still
to be seen on the banks of the Nivelle. It is now known as the House of
Louis XIV. Here he was entertained by the widowed _châtelaine_ with the
sumptuous hospitality for which the family was noted. A light gallery was
put up to connect the château with that of Joanocnia, in which lodged
Anne of Austria and the Spanish Infanta. Here took place the first
interview between the king and his bride, described by Mme. de Motteville
in her piquant manner. From the gallery the Infanta, after her marriage,
took pleasure in throwing handfuls of silver coin to the people, called
_pièces de largesses_, struck by the town expressly for the occasion,
with the heads of the royal pair on one side and on the other St. Jean de
Luz in a shower of gold, with the motto: _Non lætior alter_.
The château of Joanocnia, frequently called since that time the château
of the Infanta, was built by Joannot de Haraneder, a merchant of the
place, who was ennobled for his liberality when the island of Rhé was
besieged by the English in 1627, and about to surrender to the Duke
of Buckingham for want of supplies and reinforcements. The Comte de
Grammont, governor of Bayonne, being ordered by Richelieu to organize an
expedition at once for the relief of the besieged, issued a command for
every port to furnish its contingent. St. Jean de Luz eagerly responded
by sending a large flotilla, and Joannot de Haraneder voluntarily gave
the king two vessels, supplied with artillery, worthy of figuring in the
royal navy. For this and subsequent services he was ennobled. His arms
are graven in marble over the principal fire-place of the château--a
plum-tree on an anchor, with the motto:
“Dans l’ancre le beau prunier
Est rendu un fort riche fructier.”
This château, though somewhat devoid of symmetry, has a certain beauty
and originality of its own, with its alternate rows of brick and
cream-colored stone, after the Basque fashion, its Renaissance portico
between two square towers facing the harbor, and the light arches of the
two-story gallery in the Venetian style. Over the principal entrance is a
marble tablet with the following inscription in letters of gold:
“L’Infante je reçus l’an mil six cent soixante.
On m’appelle depuis le chasteau de l’Infante.”
The letter L and the _fleur-de-lis_ are to be seen as we ascend the grand
staircase, and two paintings by Gérôme after the style of the XVIIth
century, recalling the alliance of France and Spain and the well-known
_mot_ of Louis XIV.:
“Il n’y a plus de Pyrénées!”
All the details of the residence of the royal family here, as related
by Mme. de Motteville and Mlle. de Montpensier, are full of curious
interest. The former describes the beautiful Isle of Conference and the
superb pavilion for the reunion of the two courts, with two galleries
leading towards France and Spain. This building was erected by the
painter Velasquez, who, as _aposentador mayor_, accompanied Philip IV.
to the frontier. This fatiguing voyage had an unfavorable effect on the
already declining health of the great painter, and he died a few weeks
after his return.
During the preliminary arrangements for the marriage Louis led a solemn,
uniform life. Like the queen-mother, who was always present at Mass,
Vespers, and Benediction, he daily attended public services, sometimes
at the Recollects’ and sometimes at the parish church. He always dined
in public at the château of Lohobiague, surrounded by crowds eager to
witness the process of royal mastication. In the afternoon there were
performances by comedians who had followed the court from Paris; and
sometimes Spanish mysteries, to which Queen Anne was partial, were
represented, in which the actors were dressed as hermits and nuns, and
sacred events were depicted, to the downright scandal of the great
mademoiselle. The day ended with a ball, in which the king did not
disdain to display the superior graces of his royal person in a _ballet
compliqué_. Everything, in short, was quite in the style of the _Grand
Cyrus_ itself.
The marriage, which had taken place at Fontarabia by procuration, was
personally solemnized in the parish church of St. Jean de Luz by the
Bishop of Bayonne in the presence of an attentive crowd. The door by
which the royal couple entered was afterwards walled up, that it might
never serve for any one else--a not uncommon mark of respect in those
days. A joiner’s shop now stands against this Porta Regia. The king
presented the church on this occasion with a complete set of sacred
vessels and ecclesiastical vestments.
The church in which Louis XIV. was married is exteriorly a noble building
with an octagonal tower, but of no architectural merit within. There are
no side aisles, but around the nave are ranges of galleries peculiar
to the Basque churches, where the separation of the men from the
women is still rigorously maintained. The only piece of sculpture is a
strange _Pietà_ in which the Virgin, veiled in a large cope, holds the
dead Christ on her knees. A rather diminutive angel, in a flowing robe
with pointed sleeves of the time of Charles VII., bears a scroll the
inscription of which has become illegible.
Behind the organ, in the obscurity of the lower gallery of the church,
hangs a dark wooden frame--short but broad--with white corners, which
contains a curious painting of the XVIIth century representing Christ
before Pilate. It is by no means remarkable as a work of art; for it is
deficient in perspective, there is no grace in the drapery, no special
excellence of coloring. The figures are generally drawn with correctness,
but the faces seem rather taken from pictures than from real life. But
however poor the execution, this painting merits attention on account of
its dramatic character. The composition represents twenty-six persons.
At the left is Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, seated in a large
arm-chair beneath a canopy, pointing with his left hand towards the
Saviour before him. In his right hand he holds a kind of sceptre; his
beard is trimmed in the style of Henri Quatre; he wears a large mantle
lined with ermine, and on his head a _toque_, such as the old presidents
of parliament used to wear in France.
Below Pilate is the clerk recording the votes in a large register, and
before him is the urn in which they are deposited.
In front of the clerk, but separated from him by a long white scroll on
which is inscribed the sentence pronounced by Pilate, is seated our
Saviour, his loins girded with a strip of scarlet cloth, his bowed head
encircled by luminous rays, his attitude expressive of humility and
submission, his bound hands extended on his knees.
In the centre of the canvas, above this group, is the high-priest
Caiaphas standing under an arch, his head thrown back, and his hands
extended in an imposing attitude. He wears a cap something like a mitre,
a kind of stole is crossed on his breast, his long robe is adorned with
three flounces of lace. His face is that of a young man. The slight black
mustache he wears is turned up in a way that gives him a resemblance to
Louis XIII. It is evidently a portrait of that age.
At the side of Pilate, and behind Christ, are ranged the members of the
Jewish Sanhedrim, standing or sitting, in various postures, with white
scrolls in their hands, which they hold like screens, bearing their names
and the expression of their sentiments respecting the divine Victim.
Their dress is black or white, but varied in form. Most of them wear a
_mosette_, or ermine cape, and the collar of some order of knighthood, as
of S. Michael and the S. Esprit. They are all young, have mustaches, and
look as if they belonged to the time of Louis Treize. On their heads are
turbans, or _toques_.
Through the open window, at the end of the pretorium, may be seen the
mob, armed with spears, and expressing its sentiments by means of a
scroll at the side of the window: “If thou let this man go, thou art not
Cæsar’s friend. Crucify him! crucify him! His blood be on us and on our
children.”
The chief interest of the picture centres in these inscriptions, which
are in queer old French of marvellous orthography. At the bottom of the
painting, to the left, is the following:
“Sentence, or decree, of the sanguinary Jews against Jesus
Christ, the Saviour of the world.”
Over Pilate we read:
“PONTIUS PILATE JUDEX.”
The sentiments of the high-priests and elders, whose names we give in the
original, are thus expressed:
“1. SIMON LEPROS. For what cause or reason is he held for
mutiny or sedition?
“2. RABAN. Wherefore are laws made, I pray, unless to be kept
and executed?
“3. ACHIAS. No one should be condemned to death whose cause is
not known and weighed.
“4. SABATH. There is no law or right by which one not proved
guilty is condemned; wherefore we would know in what way this
man hath offended.
“5. ROSMOPHIN. For what doth the law serve, if not executed?
“6. PUTÉPHARES. A stirrer-up of the people is a scourge to the
land; therefore he should be banished.
“7. RIPHAR. The penalty of the law is prescribed only for
malefactors who should be made to confess their misdeeds and
then be condemned.
“8. JOSEPH D’ARAMATHEA. Truly, it is a shameful thing, and
detestable, there be no one in this city who seeks to defend
the innocent.
“9. JORAM. How can we condemn him to death who is just?
“10. EHIERIS. Though he be just, yet shall he die, because by
his preaching he hath stirred up and excited the people to
sedition.
“11. NICODEMUS. Our law condemns and sentences to death no man
for an unknown cause.
“12. DIARABIAS. He hath perverted the people; therefore is he
guilty and worthy of death.
“13. SAREAS. This seditious man should be banished as one born
for the destruction of the land.
“14. RABINTH. Whether he be just or not, inasmuch as he will
neither obey nor submit to the precepts of our forefathers, he
should not be tolerated in the land.
“15. JOSAPHAT. Let him be bound with chains and be perpetually
imprisoned.
“16. PTOLOMÉE. Though it be not clear whether he is just or
unjust, why do we hesitate: why not at once condemn him to
death or banish him?
“17. TERAS. It is right he should be banished or sent to the
emperor.
“18. MESA. If he is a just man, why do we not yield to his
teachings: if wicked, why not send him away?
“19. SAMECH. Let us weigh the case, so he have no cause to
contradict us. Whatever he does, let us chastise him.
“20. CAÏPHAS PONTIFEX. Ye know not well what ye would have. It
is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and
that the whole nation perish not.
“21. THE PEOPLE TO PILATE. If thou let this man go, thou art
not the friend of Cæsar. Crucify him! crucify him! His blood be
on us and on our children!”
On the large scroll in the centre of the picture is the sentence of
Pilate:
“I, Pontius Pilate, pretor and judge in Jerusalem under the
thrice powerful Emperor Tiberius, whose reign be eternally
blessed and prospered, in this tribunal, or judicial chair, in
order to pronounce and declare sentence for the synagogue of
the Jewish nation with respect to Jesus Christ here present, by
them led and accused before me, that, being born of father and
mother of poor and base extraction, he made himself by lofty
and blasphemous words the Son of God and King of the Jews, and
boasted he could rebuild the temple of Solomon, having heard
and examined the case, do say and declare on my conscience he
shall be crucified between two thieves.”
This picture is analogous to the old mysteries of the Passion once so
popular in this region, in which the author who respected the meaning of
the sacred text was at liberty to draw freely on his imagination. It was
especially in the dialogue that lay the field for his genius. However
naïve these sacred dramas, they greatly pleased the people. A painting
similar to this formerly existed in St. Roch’s Church at Paris, in which
figured the undecided Pilate in judicial array, Caiaphas the complacent
flatterer of the people, and the mob with its old _rôle_ of “Crucify him!
crucify him!”
We must not forget a work of art, of very different character, associated
with the history of St. Jean de Luz. It is a curious piece of needle-work
commemorating the conferences of the two great statesmen, Cardinal
Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro, and evidently designed by an able artist,
perhaps by Velasquez himself. It is a kind of _courte-pointe_ (it would
never do to call it by the ignoble name of coverlet!) of linen of
remarkable fineness, on which are embroidered in purple silk the eminent
personages connected with the treaty of the Pyrenees, as well as various
allegorical figures and accessory ornaments, which make it a genuine
historic picture of lively and interesting character. This delicate piece
of Spanish needle-work was wrought by the order of Don Luis de Haro as a
mark of homage to his royal master. He presented it to the king on his
feast-day, May 1, 1661, and it probably adorned the royal couch. But the
better to comprehend this work of art--for such it is, in spite of its
name--let us recall briefly the events that suggested its details.
Philip IV. ascended the Spanish throne in 1621, when barely sixteen years
of age. His reign lasted till 1665. He had successively two ministers of
state, both of great ability, but of very different political views. In
the first part of his reign the young monarch gave his whole confidence
to the Count of Olivares, whose authority was almost absolute till 1648.
But his ministry was far from fortunate. On the contrary, it brought
such humiliating calamities on the country that the king at length awoke
to the danger that menaced it. He dismissed Olivares and appointed the
count’s nephew and heir in his place, who proved one of the ablest
ministers ever known in Spain. He was a descendant of the brave Castilian
lord to whom Alfonso VII. was indebted for the capture of Zurita, but
who would accept no reward from the grateful prince but the privilege of
giving the name of Haro to a town he had built. It was another descendant
of this proud warrior who was made archbishop of Mexico in the latter
part of the XVIIIth century, and was so remarkable for his charity and
eloquence as a preacher.
Don Luis not only had the military genius of his ancestor, but the
prudence of a real statesman, and he succeeded in partially repairing
the disasters of the preceding ministry. He raised an army and equipped
a powerful squadron, by which he repulsed the French, checked the
Portuguese, brought the rebellious provinces into subjection, and
effected the treaty of Munster; which energetic measures produced such an
effect on the French government as to lead to amicable relations between
the two great ministers who, at this time, held the destiny of Europe in
their hands, and to bring about a general peace in 1659.
It was with this object Cardinal Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro agreed upon
a meeting on the _Ile des Faisans_--as the Isle of Conference was then
called--which led to the treaty of the Pyrenees.
As a reward for Don Luis’ signal services, particularly the peace he had
cemented by an alliance so honorable to the nation, Philip IV., in the
following year, conferred on him the title of duke, and gave him the
surname _de la Paz_.
It was at this time Don Luis had this curious _courte-pointe_ wrought as
a present to the king. He was the declared patron of the fine arts, and
had established weekly reunions to bring together the principal artists
of Spain, some of whom probably designed this memorial of his glory.
It was preserved with evident care, and handed down from one sovereign
to another, till it finally fell into the possession of the mother of
Ferdinand VII., who, wishing to express her sense of the fidelity of one
of her ladies of honor, gave her this valuable counterpane. In this way
it passed into the hands of its present owner at Bayonne.
On the upper part of this covering the power of Spain is represented by
a woman holding a subdued lion at her feet. In the centre are Nuestra
Señora del Pilar and S. Ferdinand, patrons of the kingdom, around whom
are the eagles of Austria, so closely allied to Spain. And by way of
allusion to the _Ile des Faisans_, where the recent negotiations had
taken place, pheasants are to be seen in every direction. Cardinal
Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro are more than once represented. In one
place they are presenting an olive branch to the powers they serve; in
another they are advancing, side by side, towards Philip IV., to solicit
the hand of his daughter for Louis XIV. Here Philip gives his consent to
the marriage, and, lower down, Louis receives his bride in the presence
of two females who personify France and Spain. The intermediate spaces
are filled up with allusions to commerce with foreign lands and the
progress of civilization at home. Not only war, victory, and politics
have their emblems, but literature, beneficence, and wealth. But there
are many symbols the meaning of which it would require the sagacity of a
Champollion to fathom.
This is, perhaps, the only known instance of a prime minister directing
his energies to the fabrication of a counterpane. Disraeli, to be sure,
has woven many an extravagant web of romance with Oriental profusion of
ornament, but not, to our knowledge, in purple and fine linen, like Don
Luis de Haro. We have seen one of the gorgeous coverlets of Louis XIV.,
but it was wrought by the young ladies of St. Cyr under the direction
of Mme. de Maintenon; and there is another in the Hôtel de Cluny that
once belonged to Francis I. The grand-daughter of Don Luis de Haro, the
sole heiress of the house, married the Duke of Alba, carrying with her
as a dowry the vast possessions of Olivares, Guzman, and Del Carpio. The
brother-in-law of the ex-Empress Eugénie is a direct descendant of theirs.
Opposite St. Jean de Luz, on the other side of the Nivelle, is Cibourre,
with its solemn, mysterious church, and its widowed houses built along
the quay and straggling up the hill of Bordagain. Prosperous once like
its neighbor, it also participated in its misfortunes, and now wears
the same touching air of melancholy. The men are all sailors--the
best sailors in Europe--but they are absent a great part of the year.
Fearless wreckers live along the shore, who brave the greatest dangers
to aid ships in distress. In more prosperous days its rivalry with St.
Jean de Luz often led to quarrels, and the islet which connects the two
places was frequently covered with the blood shed in these encounters.
The convent of Recollects, now a custom-house, which we pass on our way
to Cibourre, was founded in expiation of this mutual hatred, and very
appropriately dedicated to _Notre Dame de la Paix_--Our Lady of Peace.
The cloister, with its round arches, is still in good preservation, and
the cistern is to be seen in the court, constructed by Cardinal Mazarin,
that the friars might have a supply of soft water.
The Basques are famed for their truthfulness and honesty, the result
perhaps of the severity of their ancient laws, one of which ordered
a tooth to be extracted every time a person was convicted of lying!
No wonder the love of truth took such deep _root_ among them. But had
this stringent law been handed down and extended to other lands, what
toothless communities there would now be in the world!
THE ETERNAL YEARS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE.”
II.
THE PULSATIONS OF TIME.
The deduction we arrive at from the argument which we have laid down is
that the history of the world is a consistent one, and not a series of
loose incidents strung together. It is as much this morally, it is as
truly the evolution and unwinding of a high moral law and of a great
spiritual truth, as the life of the plant from the seed to the ripe fruit
is the development of a natural growth. This last is governed by laws
with which we are only partially acquainted; whereas the moral law and
the spiritual truth are revealed to us by the divine scheme of creation
and redemption. There is nothing existing, either in the natural or in
the spiritual law, and especially in this last, which is not more or
less, in one way or in another, by assertion or by negation, a revelation
of the divine Being.
He reveals himself directly by his volitions and indirectly by his
permissions. And we can only be one with him when we have learnt to
accept both and to submit to both; not in the spirit of quietism or
fatalism, but as actively entering into his intentions, accepting what
he wills, and bearing what he permits. There is no harmony possible
between the soul and God until we have arrived at this; and the history
of the world is the history of man’s acquiescence in, or resistance to,
the supreme will of God. The first disruption of the will of man from
the will of God, in the fall of man, wove a dark woof into the web of
time; and every act of ours which is not according to the will of God
weaves the same into our own lives, because it is a rupture of the law
of harmony which God has instituted between himself as creator and us
as creatures. Were that harmony unbroken, man would rest in God as in
his centre; for, being finite, he has no sufficiency in himself, but
for ever seeks some good extrinsic to himself. The same applies to all
creation, whose ultimate end and highest good must always be some object
beyond, and above itself; and that object is none other than God, “quod
ignorantes colitis,”[270]--the finite striving after the Infinite. Thus
the whole divine government of the world is a gradual unfolding of the
divine Will, according as we are able to receive it. And the degree
of receptivity in mankind, at various periods of the world’s history,
and in different localities, accounts for the variety in the divine
dispensations, and for the imperfection of some as compared with others.
The “yet more excellent way”[271] could not be received by all at all
times. The promise was given to Abraham. But four hundred and thirty
years elapsed before its fulfilment, for the express purpose of being
occupied and spent in the institution of the law as a less perfect
dispensation, and which was given because of transgressions--“propter
transgressiones posita est”[272]--thus showing the adaptive government of
God: the gradual building up of the city of the Lord, whose stones are
the living souls of men, which are “hewed and made ready,”[273] but so
that there shall be “neither hammer, nor axe, nor tool of iron heard”
while it is building. For God does not force his creature. He pours not
“new wine into old bottles,” but waits in patience the growth of his
poor creatures, and the slow and gradual leavening of the great mass.
A time had been when God walked with man “at the afternoon air”;[274]
and whatever may be the full meaning of this exquisitely-expressed
intercourse, at least it must have been intimate and tender. But when
the black pall of evil fell on the face of creation, the light of God’s
intercourse with man was let in by slow degrees, like single stars coming
out in the dark firmament. The revelations, like the stars, varied in
magnitude and glory, lay wide apart from each other, rose at different
intervals of longer or shorter duration, and conveyed, like them, a
flickering and uncertain light, until the “Sun of Justice arose with
health in his wings,”[275] and “scattered the rear of darkness thin.” The
degree of light vouchsafed was limited by the capacity of the recipient;
and that capacity has not always been the same in all ages, any more than
in any one age it is the same in all the contemporary men, or in each man
the same at all periods of his life. It is thus that we arrive at the
explanation of an apparent difference of tone, color, and texture, so to
speak, in the various manifestations of God to man. The manifestation is
limited to the capacity of the recipient; and not only is it limited,
but to a certain extent it becomes, as it were, tinged by the properties
of the medium through which it is transmitted to others. It assumes
characteristics that are not essentially its own. For so marvellous is
the respect with which the Creator treats the freedom of his creature
that he suffers us to give a measure of our own color to what he reveals
to us, so that it may be more our own, more on our level, more within
our grasp; as though he poured the white waters of saving truth into
glasses of varied colors, and thus hid from us a pellucidity too perfect
for our nature. And thus it happens that to us who dwell in the light of
God’s church, with the seven lamps of the seven sacraments burning in
the sanctuary, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob hardly seems
to us the same God as our God. We see him through the prism of the past,
amid surroundings that are strange to us, in the old patriarchal life
that seems so impossible a mode of existence to the denizens of great
cities in modern Europe.
This is equally true throughout the history of the world. It is also true
of every individual soul; and it is true of the same soul at different
periods of its existence. He is the same God always and everywhere. But
there is a difference in the kind of reception which each soul gives
to that portion of divine knowledge and grace which it is capable of
receiving and which it actually does receive. For they are “divers kinds
of vessels, every little vessel, from the vessels of cups even to every
instrument of music.”[276] They differ in capacity and they differ in
material; and the great God, in revealing himself, does so by degrees.
He has deposited, as it were, the whole treasure of himself in the bosom
of his spouse, the church; but the births of new grace and further
developed truth only come to us as we can bear them and when we can bear
them. The body of truth is all there; but the dispensing of that truth
varies in degree as time goes on. God governs in his own world; but he
does so behind and through the human instruments whom he condescends
to employ. And as, in the exercise of his own free-will, man chose the
evil and refused the good, so has the Almighty accommodated himself to
the conditions which man has instituted. Were he to do otherwise, he
would force the will of his creature, which he never will do, because
the doing it would have for result to deprive that creature of all moral
status and reduce him to a machine. From the moment that we lose the
power of refusing the good and taking the evil, from the moment that any
force really superior to that which has been put into the arsenals of
our own being robs us of the faculty of selection, we lose all merit and
consequently all demerit. The Creator, when he made man, surrounded him
with the respect due to a being who had the power of disposing of his own
everlasting destiny. Nor has he ever done, nor will he do, anything which
can entrench on this prerogative. The whole system of grace is a system
divinely devised to afford man aid in the selection he has to make. There
lies an atmosphere of grace all around our souls, as there lies the
air we breathe around our senses. The one is as frequently unperceived
by us as the other.[277] We are without consciousness as regards its
presence, as we are without direct habitual consciousness of the act of
breathing and of our own existence, except as from time to time we make a
reflective modification in our own mind of the idea of the air and of the
fact of our inhaling it. We are unconscious that it is the divine Creator
who is for ever sustaining our physical existence. We are oblivious of
it for hours together, unless we stop and think. It is the same with the
presence of grace.
And though “exciting” grace, as theology calls it, begins with the
illustration of the intellect, it does not follow that we are always by
any means conscious of this illustration. It is needless to carry out
the theological statement in these pages. What we have said is enough to
bring us round to our point, which is that the action of grace on the
individual soul, and the long line of direct and indirect revelations
of God’s will from the creation to the present hour, though always the
same grace and always the same revelation, receive different renderings
according to the vehicle in which they are held--much as a motive in
music remains the same air, though transposed from one key to another.
Not only, therefore, does man, as it were, give a color of his own to
the revelation of God, but he has the sad faculty of limiting its flow
and circumscribing its course, even where he cannot altogether arrest
it. We are “slow of heart to believe,” and therefore is the time delayed
when the still unfulfilled promises may take effect. Our Lord declares
that Moses _permitted_ the Hebrews to put away their wives, because
of the hardness of their hearts; “but from the beginning it was not
so.”[278] God’s law had never in itself been other than what the church
has declared it to be. The state of matrimony, as God had ordained it,
was always meant to be what the church has now defined. But man was not
in a condition to receive so perfect a law; and thus the condition of
man--that is, the hardness of his heart--had the effect of modifying
the apparent will of God, as revealed in what we now know to be one of
the seven sacraments. The Hebrews were incapable of anything more than
a mutilated, or rather a truncated, expression of the divine will, as
it was represented to them in the law of Moses on the married state.
Nor could we anywhere find a more perfect illustration of our argument.
In the first place, it is given us by our Lord himself; and, in the
second, it occurs on a subject which, taken in its larger sense, involves
almost every other, lies at the root of the whole world of matter, and
of being through matter, and may be called the representative idea of
the creation. Now, if on such a question as this mankind, at some period
of their existence, and that a period which includes ages of time, and
covers, at one interval or another, the whole vast globe, could only
_bear_ an imperfect and utterly defective rendering, how much more must
there exist to be still further developed out of the “things new and
old” which lie in the womb of time and in the treasures of the church,
but which are waiting for the era when we shall be in a condition to
receive them! The whole system of our Lord’s teaching was based on this
principle. He seems, if we may so express it, afraid of overburdening
his disciples by too great demands upon their capacity. He says with
reference to the mission of S. John the Baptist: “_If_ you will receive
it, he is Elias that is to come,”[279] and in the Sermon on the Mount he
points out to them the imperfection of the old moral code, as regarded
the taking of oaths and the law of talion. Now, the moral law, as it
existed in the mind of God, could never have varied. It must always
have been “perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.” But it passed
through an imperfect medium--the one presented by the then condition of
mankind--and was modified accordingly.
We hold, therefore, in what we have now stated, a distinct view of the
way in which God governs the world; not absolutely, not arbitrarily,
but _adaptively_. And where we see imperfection, and at times apparent
retrogression, it is the free will of man forcing the will of God to his
own destruction, “until he who hindereth now, and will hinder, be taken
out of the way.”[280]
If this be true of God’s direct revelations of himself, and of his
moral law as given from time to time to mankind, according as, in
their fallen state, they could receive it--if, in short, it be true of
his direct volitions--it is also true of his permissions. If it hold
good of the revelations of his antecedent will, it holds good of the
instances (so far as we may trace them in the history of the world) of
his consequent will; that is, of his will which takes into consideration
the facts induced by man in the exercise of his own free will, which is
so constantly running counter to the antecedent will of God. The divine
permissions form the negative side of the revelation of God. They are
his permissive government of the world, not his direct government. The
direct government is the stream of revelation given to our first parents,
to the patriarchs and lawgivers of Israel, and now, in a more direct
and immediate way, through our Blessed Lord in his birth, death, and
resurrection, by the church in the sacraments, and through her temporal
head, the vicar of Christ.
Even now, when he has consummated his union with his church, and that she
is the true organ of the Holy Ghost, and thus the one true and infallible
medium and interpreter of God’s direct government of the world, he also
governs it by the indirect way of his overruling providence. The events
which occur in history have ever a double character. They have their
mere human aspect, often apparently for evil alone; and they have their
ultimate result for good, which is simply the undercurrent of God’s will
working upwards, and through the actions of mankind. Events which, on
the face of them, bear the character of unmitigated evils, like war,
have a thousand ultimate beneficial results. War is the rude, cruel
pioneer of the armies of the Lord; for where the soldier has been the
priest will follow. Persecutions kindle new faith and awake fresh ardor.
Pestilence quickens charity and leads to improvements in the condition of
the poor. Nor do we believe that it is only in this large and general,
unsympathetic, and sweeping manner that God allows good to be worked out
of evil. We have faith in the intercession of the Mother of Mercy; and
as ultimate good may arise to whole races of mankind out of terrible
calamities, so, we are persuaded, there is a more intimate, minute, and
loving interference to individual souls wherever there is huge public
calamity. The field of battle, the burning city, the flood, and the
pestilence are Mary’s harvest fields, whither she sends her angels, over
whom she is queen, with special and extraordinary graces, to gather and
collect those who might otherwise have perished, and, in the supreme
moment which is doubtless so often God’s hour, to win trophies of mercy
to the honor and glory of the Precious Blood.
Unless we believe in God’s essential, actual, and unintermittent
government of the world, we cannot solve the riddle of the Sphinx, and
her cruel, stony stare will freeze our blood as we traverse the deserts
of life. If we believe only in his direct government, we shall find it
chiefly, if not solely, in his church; and the area is sadly limited! If
we acknowledge his essential providence in his permissions, if we make
sure of his presence in what appears its very negation, then alone do
we arrive at the solution of life’s problems; and even this, not as an
obvious thing, but as a constant and ever-renewed act of faith in the
under-flowing gulf-stream of divine love, which melts the ice and softens
the rigor of the wintry epochs in the world’s history. If we admit of
this theory, which is new to none of us, though dim to some, we let in a
flood of light upon many of the incidents described in the Old Testament,
and specially spoken of as done by the will of God, but which, to our
farther-advanced revelation of God, read to us as unlike himself. The
light of the later interpretation has been thrown over the earlier fact;
but in the harmony of eternity, when we are freed from the broken chord
of time, there will be no dissonant notes.
There can be no more wonderful proof of God’s unutterable love than the
way in which he has condescended to make the very sins of mankind work to
his own glory and to the farther revelation of himself. From the first
“_felix culpa_” of our first parents, as the church does not hesitate to
call it, down to the present hour--down even to the secret depths of our
own souls, where we are conscious of the harvests of grace sprung from
repentant tears--it is still the great alchemist turning base metal in
the crucible of divine love into pure gold.
It is one of the most irrefragable proofs of the working of a perpetual
providence that can be adduced.
Granted that there are no new creations, but that creation is one act,
evolving itself by its innate force into all the phenomena which we
see, and into countless possible others which future generations of
beings will see, nothing of this can prevent the fact that the moral
development of the status of mankind, the revelations of divine truth,
and consequently of the Deity, through the flow of ages, has ever
been a bringing of good out of evil which no blind, irresponsible law
could produce. There is no sort of reason why evil should work into
its contrary good, except the reason that God is the supreme good,
and directs all apparent evil into increments of his glory, thereby
converting it into an ultimate good. We must remember, however, that
this does not diminish our culpability, because it does not affect our
free-will. It does not make evil another form of good. It is no pact with
the devil. It is war and victory, opposition and conquest. It is justice
and retribution, and it behooves us to see whether we are among those
who are keeping ourselves in harmony with the eternal God in his direct
government of the world; in harmony (so far as we know it) with his
antecedent will; or whether we are allowing ourselves to drift away into
channels of our own, working out only the things that he permits, but
which he also condemns, and laying up for ourselves that swift devouring
flame which will “try every man’s work of what sort it is.”
* * * * *
We have thus arrived at two different views of God’s government of the
world--his direct government and his indirect or permissive government.
We now come to what we may call his inductive teaching of the world--the
way in which truths are partially revealed to us, and come to us
percolating through the sands of time, as mankind needs them and can
receive them.
Our Lord himself gives us an example of this inductive process when he
speaks of “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob” as being “not the
God of the dead, but of the living,” thus showing that the Jews held, and
were bound to hold, the doctrine of immortality by an inductive process.
The teaching of the old law was symbolic and inductive. The histories of
the Old Testament are of the same character. They are written with no
apparent design. They are the simple account of such incidents as the
historian thought himself bound to record; acting, as he did, under the
divine impulse, which underlay his statements without fettering his pen.
He was not himself half conscious of the unspeakable importance of his
work. Consequently, there is no effort, hardly even common precaution and
foresight, in his mode of chronicling events. He glances at incidents
without explaining them, because while he wrote they were present to his
own experience, and would be to that of his readers. A writer in our day
would allude to a person having performed a journey of fifty miles in an
hour’s time without thinking it necessary to explain that people travel
by steam. In another part he would advert to railroads, and the rapidity
of locomotion as their result, equally without a direct reference to
the individual who effected fifty miles in an hour. To the reader of
three thousand years hence the one incidental allusion will explain
and corroborate the other, and thus, by internal evidence, prove the
authenticity and consistency of the history. Unintentional coincidences
crop up as the pages grow beneath his hand, and to the careful student of
Scripture throw light unlooked for on the exactitude and veracity of the
narrative. And the substratum of the whole of the Old Testament history
is the gradual growth of one family out of all the families of mankind,
into which, as into a carefully prepared soil, the seed of divine truth
was to be sown. Through all the variety of the Old Testament writers
the same underlying design exists; and though this was a special stream
of revelation unlike any that now exists or that is now required (for
reasons which are obvious to every Catholic who knows what the church
is), yet they form an indication of the way in which the divine Creator
is for ever governing the world and preparing it with a divine foresight
for his ultimate purpose. The Holy Ghost speaks now through a direct
organ, which organ is the church. Formerly God spoke through historic
events and multitudinous incidents in connection with one race of people.
But this very fact authorizes us to believe that the same _character_
of government exists throughout the whole universe in a greater or less
degree, and that God is preparing the way for the ultimate triumph of
the sacred Humanity and of his spouse the Church, on the far-off shores
of sultry Africa, in the inner recesses of silent China, among the huge
forests which skirt the Blue Mountains, or amid the glittering glories of
the kingdoms of ice.
There is nothing more depressingly sad, more deeply to be regretted, and
more difficult to explain than the almost hopeless narrowness of most
people in their appreciation of divinely-ordained facts. We live like
moles. We throw up a mound of dusky earth above and around us, within
which we grope and are content. The treasures of sacred lore, the depths
of spiritual science, the infinite variety of Scriptural information,
with the divinely-pointed moral of every tale, are things which most
of us are content to know exist, and to think no more about. The very
lavishness with which God has given us all that we want for the salvation
of our souls seems to have stifled in our ungenerous natures the
longing to know and to do more. When the Evangelist said that the world
would not hold the books that might be written on the sacred Humanity
alone, he must have had an intuition, not so much of the material world
and material volumes, as of the world of narrowed minds and crippled
hearts who would be found stranded on the shores of our much-vaunted
civilization and progress.
Few things are more remarkable in the tone and character of modern
Catholic writers than the small amount of use they make of Scripture:
so strangely in contrast with the old writers, and with even the great
French spiritual authors of a century and a half ago. Their pages are
rich with Scriptural lore. Their style is a constant recognition of the
government and designs of God as shown to us in our past and present, and
as we are bound to anticipate them in the future. In our time this has
given place to emotional devotion; a most excellent thing in its way, but
only likely to have much influence over our lives when it is grounded on
solid theology and directed by real knowledge. No doubt it is so in the
minds of the authors themselves; but we fear it is rare in those of their
ordinary readers, who thus drink the froth off the wine, but are not
benefited by the strengthening properties of the generous liquid itself.
Nor will they be until they have made up their minds to believe and
understand that conversion is not an isolated fact in their lives, but a
progressive act involving all the intellect, all the faculties, be they
great or small (for each one must be full up to his capacity), and all
the heart, mind, and soul. The whole man must work and be worked upon in
harmony; and we must remember that it _is_ work, and not merely feeling,
consolation, emotion, prettiness, and ornament, but an intellectual
growth, going on _pari passu_ with a spiritual growth, until the whole
vessel is fitted and prepared for the glory of God.
We think we may venture to say that few things will conduce more to this
than the study of the divine Scriptures under the light and teaching
of the Catholic Church. In them we find a profound revelation of the
character of God. We are, as we read them interpreted to us by the lamp
of the sanctuary, let down into awful depths of the divine Eternal Mind.
We watch the whole world and all creation working up for the supreme
moment of the birth of Jesus; while in the life of our Blessed Lord
himself we find, condensed into those wonderful thirty-three years,
the whole system of the church--the spiritual fabric which is to fill
eternity, the one God-revealing system which is finally to supersede all
others.
Unhappily many persons are under the delusion that narrowness and
ignorance are the same as Christian simplicity, and that innocence means
ignorance of everything else, as well as of evil. These are the people
who are afraid to look facts in the face, and to read them off as part
of the God-directed history of the world. These are they to whom science
is a bugbear. They hug their ignorance as being their great safeguard,
and wear blinkers lest they should be startled by the events which cross
their path. Grown men and women do it for themselves and attempt it for
their children, and meanwhile those to whom we ought to be superior are
rushing on with headlong daring, carrying intellectual eminence, and
originality, and investigation of science, all before them; while we, who
should be clad in the panoply of the faith, and afraid of nothing, are
putting out the candles and shading the lamps, that we may idly enjoy a
shadow too dense for real work.
And yet is not the earth ours? Is not all that exists our heritage? To
whom does anything belong if not to us, the sons of the church, the
sole possessors of infallible truth, the only invulnerable ones, the
only ever-enduring and ever-increasing children of the light? The past
is ours; the present should be ours; the future is all our own. Our
triumph may be slow (and it is slower because we are cowards), but it
is certain. Are we not tenfold the children of the covenant, the sons
of the Father’s house, the heirs of all? We alone are in possession of
what all science and art must ultimately fall back upon and harmonize
with. There is no success possible but what is obtained, and shall in the
future be obtained, in union with the church of God. Have we forgotten,
are we ever for a moment permitted to forget, that the church of God
is not an accident, nor a cunningly-devised, tolerably able, partially
infirm organization, but that she is the spouse of the God-Man, the one
revelation of God, perfect and entire, though but gradually given forth;
that all the harmonies of science are fragments of the harmony of God
himself, of his pure being, of the _Qui Est_; and that the harmony of the
arts is simply the human expression of the harmony of the _Logos_, the
human utterances of the articulations of the divine Word, as they come to
us in our far-off life-like echoes from eternity?
Even the great false religions of the past, and of the present in the
remote East, are but man’s discord breaking the harmony of truth while
retaining the key-note: the immortality of the soul and the perfection
of a future state in the deep thoughts of Egypt, the universality of
God’s providential government of the world in Greek mythology, the union
of the soul with God in Brahminism, and the One God of Mahometanism.
Each has its kernel of truth, its ideal nucleus of supernatural belief,
which it had caught from the great harmony of God in broken fragments,
and enshrined in mystic signs. Even now, as we look back upon them all,
we are bound to confess that they stand on a totally different ground
from the multitudinous sects of our day, which break off from the one
body of the church and drift off into negation or Protestantism. Far be
it from us to insinuate that any, the lowest form of Christianity, the
weakest utterance of the dear name of Jesus, is not ten thousand fold
better than the most abstruse of the old Indian or Egyptian religions.
Wherever the name of Jesus is uttered, no matter how imperfectly, there
is more hope of light and of salvation than in the deepest symbols of
heathen or pagan creeds. It may be but one ray of light, but still it is
light--the real warming, invigorating light of the sun, and not the cold
and deleterious light of the beautiful moon, who has poisoned what she
has borrowed.[281] Nevertheless, and maintaining this with all the energy
of which we are capable, it is still true that each one of the great
false religions, which at various times and in divers places have swayed
mankind, was rather the overgrowth of error on a substantial truth than
the breaking up of truth into fragmentary and illogical negation, which
is the characteristic of all forms of secession from the Catholic unity
of the church. The modern aberrations from the faith are a mere jangle
of sounds, while the old creeds were the petrifaction of truth. The
modern forms of faith outside the church are a negation of truth rather
than a distortion. Consequently, they are for ever drifting and taking
Protean shapes that defy classification.
They have broken up into a hundred forms; they will break up into a
thousand more, till the whole fabric has crumbled into dust. They have
none of the strong hold on human nature which the old religions had,
because they are not the embodiment of a sacred mystery, but rather the
explaining away of all mystery. They are a perpetual drifting detritus,
without coherence as without consistency; and as they slip down the slant
of time, they fall into the abyss of oblivion, and will leave not a trace
behind, only in so far that, vanishing from sight, they make way for the
fuller establishment of the truth--the eternal, the divine, spherical
truth, absolute in its cohesion and perfect in all its parts.
The hold which heathen and pagan creeds have had upon mankind conveys a
lesson to ourselves which superficial thinkers are apt to overlook. It is
certain they could not have held whole nations beneath their influence
had not each in its turn been an embodiment of some essential truth
which, though expressed through error, remains in itself essentially
a part of truth. They snatched at fragments of the natural law which
governs the universe, or they embodied in present expression the
inalienable hopes of mankind. They took the world of nature as the
utterance neither of a passing nor of an inexorable law, but of an
inscrutable Being, and believed that the mystical underlies the natural.
Untaught by the sweet revelations of Christianity, their religion could
assume no aspect but one of terror, silent dread, and deep horror. Their
only escape from this result was in the deterioration that necessarily
follows the popularization of all abstract ideas, unless protected by
a system at once consistent and elastic, like that which is exhibited
in the discipline of the Catholic Church. They wearied of the rarefied
atmosphere of unexplained mystery. They wanted the tangible and evident
in its place. Like the Israelites, they lusted after the flesh-pots of
Egypt; and their lower nature and evil passions rebelled against the
moral loftiness of abstract truth. The multitude could not be kept up
to the mark, and needed coarser food. The result was inevitable. But as
all religion involves mystery, instead of working upward through the
natural law to the spiritual and divine law, they inverted the process,
and grovelled down below the natural law, with its sacramentalistic
character, to the preternatural and diabolic. Mystery was retained, but
only in the profanation of themselves and of natural laws, until they had
passed outside all nature, and, making a hideous travesty of humanity,
had become more vile and hateful than the devils they served.
Thus the Romans vulgarized the Greek mythology; and that which had
remained during a long period as a beautiful though purely human
expression of a divine mystery, among a people whose religion consisted
mainly in the worship of the beautiful, and who themselves transcended
all that humanity has ever since beheld in their own personal perfection
of beauty, became, when it passed through the coarser hands of the
Romans, a degenerate vulgarity, which infected their whole existence, in
art and in manners, quite as effectually as in religion. Then Rome flung
open her gates to all the creeds of all the world, and the time-honored
embodiments of fragmentary but intrinsic truth met together, and were all
equally tolerated and equally degenerated. All!--except the one whole and
perfect truth: the Gospel of Salvation. That was never tolerated. That
alone could not be endured, because the instinct of evil foresaw its own
impending ruin in the Gospel of peace.
It was a new thing for mankind to be told that a part of the essence
of religion was elevated morality and the destruction of sin in the
individual. Whatever comparative purity of life had co-existed with the
old religions was hardly due to their influence among the multitude,
though it might be so with those whose educated superiority enabled them
to reason out the morality of creeds. While the rare philosopher was
reading the inmost secret of the abstract idea on which the religion
of his country was based, and the common pagan was practising the most
degraded sorcery and peering into obscene mysteries, without a single
elevation of thought, suddenly the life of the God-Man was put before the
world, and the whole face of creation was gradually changed.
But as the shadows of the past in the old religions led up to the light,
so shall the light of the present lead up to the “perfect day.”
TO BE CONTINUED.
SEARCH FOR OLD LACE IN VENICE.
One is almost ashamed to mention Venice now, or any other of those
thousand-and-one bournes of hackneyed travel and staples of hackneyed
books. There is probably no one claiming a place in a civilized community
who does not know Venice almost as well as do her own children, and
who could not discourse intelligently of the Bridge of Sighs, the
Doge’s Palace, and the Rialto Bridge, of St. Mark’s and the brazen
horses. Still, when one has read multitudinous poems about gondolas and
gondoliers, and any amount of descriptions of the Grand Canal, with its
palaces of various styles of architecture, and some few dramas about the
grand and gloomy, the secret and awful, doings of ancient Venetian life,
even then there are nooks in the place and incidents in the doings which
escape notice. A traveller arriving at Venice is hardly surprised at the
water-street, with which pictures have already made him familiar, but the
mode of entering a covered gondola--crab-fashion--is not so familiar, and
he generally butts his head against the low ceiling, eliciting a laugh
from his gondolier and the good-humored bystanders, before he learns the
native and proper way of backing into his seat. So, too, in rowing slowly
and dreamily about from church to church, full of artistic marvels or
wonderful historical monuments, he feels to a certain degree at home. He
has seen all this before; the present is but a dream realized. But there
are now and then unexpected sights--though, it must be confessed, not
many--and of course such are the most interesting, even if they are by
no means on a level with those more famous and more beautiful.
From Venice to Vicenza is but a short distance by rail, and Vicenza
boasts of Roman ruins, and mediæval churches, and a Palladian theatre;
but on our day’s trip there, in early spring, we certainly dwelt more on
the aspect of the woods and plains, with their faint veil of yellow green
already beginning to appear, the few flowers in the _osteria_ garden, and
the box hedges and aloes in the cemetery. The beauty of the Venetian and
Lombard plains lies more in their mere freshness than in their diversity;
it is entirely a beauty of detail, a beauty fit for the minuteness of
Preraphaelite art rather than for the sweeping brush of the great masters
of conventional landscape painting. But coming from Venice every trace
of verdure was grateful to the eye, and we felt as one who, having been
confined in a beautiful, spacious room, filled with treasures and scented
with subtle perfume, might feel on coming suddenly into the fresh air of
a prairie. By contrast, the suggestion of fresh air and open space draws
us at once to our subject--a search after old lace in one of the cities
known to possess many treasures in that line.
Like all other industries in Venice, the sale of lace thrives chiefly on
the fancy of the foreign visitors. The natives are generally too poor to
buy much of it, and, indeed, much of what is in the market is the product
of forced sacrifices made by noble but impoverished families of Venetian
origin. It is a sad thing to see the spoils of Italy still scattered
over the world, as if the same fate had pursued her, with a few glorious
intervals of triumph and possession, ever since the barbarian ancestors
of her _forestieri_ rifled her treasure-houses under the banners of
Celtic, Cimbrian, and Gothic chieftains. What Brennus, Alaric, and
Genseric began the Constable of Bourbon and the great Napoleon continued
by force; but what is still sadder is to see the daily disintegration
of other treasure-houses whose contents are unwillingly but necessarily
bartered away to rich Englishmen, Americans, and Russians. Pictures,
jewelry, lace, goldsmith’s work, artistic trifles--precious through
their material and history, but more so through the family associations
which have made them heirlooms--too often pass from the sleepy, denuded,
dilapidated, but still beautiful Italian palace to the cabinet or gallery
or museum of the lucky foreign connoisseur, or even--a worse fate--into
the hands of men to whom possession is much, but appreciation very little.
While at Venice we were so lazy as never to go sight-seeing, which
accounts for the fact that we missed many a thing which visitors of a few
days see and talk learnedly about; and if the business activity of an old
lace-seller had not brought her to the hotel, our search after lace might
never have been made. She brought fine specimens with her, but her prices
were rather high, and, after admiring the lace, she was dismissed without
getting any orders. But she came again, and this time left her address.
We wanted some lace for a present, and fancied that the proverbial
facility for taking anything rather than nothing, which distinguishes
the Italian seller of curiosities, would induce her to strike some more
favorable bargain in her own house, where no other customer would be at
hand to treasure up her weakness as a precedent.
It was not easy to find the house. Many intricate little canals had to be
traversed (for on foot we should probably have lost our way over and over
again); and as we passed, many a quaint court, many a delicate window,
many a sombre archway, and as often the objects which we, perhaps too
conventionally, call picturesque--such as the tattered clothes drying
on long lines stretched from window to window; heaps of refuse piled up
against princely gateways; rotten posts standing up out of the water,
with the remnants of the last coat of paint they ever had, a hundred
years ago; gaudy little shrines calculated to make a Venetian _popolana_
feel very pious and an “unregenerate” artist well-nigh frantic--met our
sight. At last the house was reached, or at least the narrow quay from
which a _calle_, or tiny, dark street, plunged away into regions unknown
but inviting. Our gondolier was wise in the street-labyrinth lore of
his old city, and up some curious outside stairs, and then again by
innumerable inside ones, we reached the old woman’s rooms. Of these there
were two--at least, we saw no more. Both were poor and bare, and the old
lace seller was wrinkled, unclean, good-humored, and eager. She talked
volubly, not being obliged to use a foreign tongue to help herself out,
but going on with her soft, gliding, but quick Venetian tones. Travelling
in Italy and coming in contact with all classes of the people is apt
sadly to take down one’s scholarly conceit in knowing the language of
Dante and Petrarch; for all the classicism of one’s school-days goes for
very little in bargaining for lace, giving orders in a shop or market,
or trying not to let boat-and-donkey-men cheat you to your face. There
is this comfort: that if you often cannot understand the people, they
can almost invariably understand you (unless your accent be altogether
outrageous), which saves John Bull and his American cousin the ignominy
of being brought an umbrella when they have asked for mushrooms, and
actually taken the trouble to give a diagram of that vegetable.
The prices were kept so obstinately above our means that all purchase of
lace was impossible; but the old woman was untiring in displaying her
stores of antique treasures, and we felt sufficiently rewarded for our
expedition. She herself was worth a visit; for, like many ancient Italian
matrons, and not a few nearer home, she was one of that generation of
models whom you would have sworn has endured from the days of Titian
and Vandyke, immortally old and unchangeably wrinkled. You see such
faces in the galleries, with the simple title “Head of an old man”--or
old woman, as the case may be--attributed to some famous painter; and
these weird portraits attract you far more than the youth, and beauty,
and health, and prosperity of the Duchess of Este, the baker’s handsome
daughter, or the gorgeous Eastern sibyl. Again, you do not care to have
any allegorical meaning tacked on to that intensely human face; you would
be disgusted if you found it set down in the catalogue as “a Parca,”
a magician, or a witch. You seem to know it, to remember one which
was like it, to connect it with many human vicissitudes and common,
though not the less pathetic, troubles. She is probably poor and has
been hard-working; wifehood and motherhood have been stern realities
to her, instead of poems lived in luxurious houses and earthly plenty;
her youth’s romance was probably short, fervid, passionate, but soon
lapsed into the dreary struggle of the poor for bare life. Chance and old
age have made her look hard, though in truth her heart would melt at a
tender love-tale like that of a girl of fifteen, and her brave, bright
nature belies the lines on her face. Just as women live this kind of life
nowadays, so they did three and five hundred years ago; so did probably
those very models immortalized by great painters; so did others long
before art had reached the possibility of truthful portraiture.
Our old friend the lace-seller, though she has given occasion for this
rambling digression, did not, however, at the time, suggest all these
things to our mind.
If she herself was a type of certain models of the old masters, her wares
were also a reminder of famous people, scenes, and places of Venice.
They were all of one kind, all of native manufacture, and, of course,
all made by hand. In a certain degenerate fashion this industry is still
continued, but the specimens of modern work which we saw were coarse
and valueless in comparison with those of the old. There were collars
and cuffs in abundance, such as both men and women wore--large, broad,
Vandyked collars like those one sees in Venetian pictures; flounces,
or rather straight bands of divers widths, from five to twenty inches,
which had more probably belonged to albs and cottas. They suggested
rich churches and gorgeous ceremonial in a time when nobles and people
were equally devoted to splendid shows, prosperity and loftiness, and a
picturesque blending of the religious and the imperial. Chasubles stiff
with gems and altars of precious stones seem to harmonize well with
these priceless veils, woven over with strange, hieroglyphic-looking,
conventional, yet beautiful forms; intricate with tracery which, put into
stone, would immortalize a sculptor; full of knots, each of which is a
miniature masterpiece of embroidery; and the whole the evident product
of an artist’s brain. This lace has not the gossamer-like beauty of
Brussels. It is thick and close in its texture, and is of that kind
which looks best on dark velvets and heavy, dusky cloths--just what one
would fancy the grave Venetian signiors wearing on state occasions. It
matches somehow with the antique XVth and XVIth century jewelry--the
magnificent, artistic, heavy collars of the great orders of chivalry; it
has something solid, substantial, and splendid about it. Such lace used
to be sold to kings and senators, not by a paltry yard measure, but by at
least twice its weight in gold; for the price was “as many gold pieces as
would cover the quantity of lace required.” Now, although this princely
mode of barter is out of fashion, old Venetian “point” is still one of
the costliest luxuries in the world, and the rich foreigners who visit
Venice usually carry away at least as much as will border a handkerchief
or trim a cap, as a memento of the beautiful and once imperial city of
the Adriatic. The modern lace--one can scarcely call it _imitation_,
any more than Salviati’s modern Venetian glass and mosaic can be so
called--seems to be deficient in the beauty and intricacy of design of
the old specimens; it is so little sought after that the industry stands
a chance of dying out, at least until after the old stock is exhausted
and necessity drives the lace-makers to ply their art more delicately.
Some modern lace, the English Honiton and some of the Irish lace, is
quite as perfect and beautiful, and very nearly as costly, as the
undoubted specimens the history of which can be traced back for two or
three hundred years. But from what we saw of Venetian point, the new
has sadly degenerated from the old, and exact copying of a few antique
models would be no detriment to the modern productions. To the unlearned
eye there is no difference between Venetian glass three or four hundred
years old, carefully preserved in a national museum, and the manufactures
of last month, sold in Salviati’s warerooms in Venice and his shop in
London. Connoisseurs say they _do_ detect some inferiority in the modern
work; but as to the lace, even the veriest tyro in such lore can see the
rough, tasteless, coarse appearance of the new when contrasted with the
old.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
SUPPOSED MIRACLES: AN ARGUMENT FOR THE HONOR OF CHRISTIANITY
AGAINST SUPERSTITION, AND FOR ITS TRUTH AGAINST UNBELIEF. By
Rev. J. M. Buckley. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1875.
Mr. Buckley is a Methodist minister, who seems to be a sensible,
honest, and straightforward person, strong in his convictions, ardently
religious, and yet abhorring the excesses of credulity and irrational
enthusiasm. The substance of his pamphlet was delivered by him as an
address before a meeting of Methodist ministers, and is principally
directed against some pretences to miraculous powers and wonderful
cure-working within his own denomination. So far as this goes, his
effort is quite successful, particularly in regard to a certain Rev. Mr.
Platt, who professes to have been cured of an obstinate infirmity by the
prayers, accompanied by the imposition of hands, of a lady by the name
of Miss Mossman. His particular object led him, however, to advance some
general propositions respecting real and supposititious miracles, and
to sustain these by arguments and appeals to so-called facts, real or
assumed, having a much wider range and application than is embraced by
his special and immediate purpose. As an _argumentum ad hominem_, his
plea may have been quite sufficient and convincing to his particular
audience; but as addressed to a wider circle in the form of a published
pamphlet, it appears to be somewhat deficient in the quality and quantity
of the proofs alleged in support of its great amplitude and confidence of
assertion. It is also defective in respect to the definition and division
of the subject-matter. To begin with his definition of miracle: “A true
miracle is an event which involves the setting aside or contradiction of
the established and uniform relations of antecedents and consequents;
such event being produced at the will of an agent not working in the
way of physical cause and effect, for the purpose of demonstration,
or punishment, or deliverance.” This definition errs by excess and
defect--by excess, in including the scope or end as a part of the
essence; by defect, in excluding effects produced by an act of divine
power which is above all established and uniform relations of antecedents
and consequents. This last fault is not of much practical importance in
respect to the question of the miracles by which a divine revelation is
proved, or of ecclesiastical miracles; because those which are simply
above nature, called by S. Thomas miracles of the first order--as the
Incarnation and the glorification of the body of Christ--are very few in
number, and are more objects than evidences of faith. The first error,
however, confuses the subject, and opens the way to a summary rejection
of evidence for particular miracles on the _à priori_ ground that they
have not that scope which has been defined by the author as necessary to
a true miracle. It is evident that God cannot give supernatural power
to perform works whose end is bad or which are simply useless. But we
cannot determine precisely what end is sufficient, in the view of God,
for enabling a person to work a miracle, except so far as we learn this
by induction and the evidence of facts which are proved. Mr. Buckley
affirms positively that the end of miracles was solely the authentication
of the divine legation of Christ and his forerunners in the mission of
making known the divine revelation. Consequently from this assumption, he
asserts that miracles ceased very early in the history of Christianity.
He also professes to have “shown, by the proof of facts, that miracles
have ceased. If the great Reformation in Germany, Switzerland, and
Scotland, if Methodism, had no miracles; if the missionaries of the
Cross [_i.e._, Protestant] are powerless to work them; and if the best
men and women of all branches of the [Protestant] church are without
this power, then indeed must they have ceased.” No one will dispute
the logical sequence or material truth of this conclusion, so far as
it does not extend beyond its own premises. He has made it, however,
a general conclusion, and promises to prove it by “conclusive and
irresistible proof.” He is therefore bound to prove that miracles had
ceased from an early epoch in the universal church, including the whole
period before the XVIth century, and in respect to all Christian bodies
except Protestants from that time to the present. In respect to the
former period, his whole proof consists in a statement that no person of
candor and judgment who has read the ante-Nicene fathers will conclude
it probable that miracles continued much beyond the beginning of the IId
century, and in the assertion “that they have ceased we have proved to a
demonstration.” In respect to supposed miracles during the latter period
in the Catholic Church, the proof that none of them are true miracles is
contained in the statement that “the opinion of the Protestant world is
settled” on that head. Very good, Mr. Buckley! Such logical accuracy,
united with the intuitive insight of genius, is a conclusive proof that
the “assistances which our age enjoys” have amazingly shortened and
simplified the tedious processes by which “that indigested heap and
fry of authors which they call antiquity” were obliged to investigate
truth and acquire knowledge. The reverend gentleman tells us that “I
have for some years past been reading, as I have found leisure, that
magnificent translation of the ante-Nicene fathers published by T. & T.
Clark, of Edinburgh, in about twenty five volumes. To say that I have
been astonished is to speak feebly.” Probably the astonishment of Origen,
Justin Martyr, and Irenæus would be no less, and would be more forcibly
expressed, if they could resume their earthly life and peruse the
remarkable address before us. If its author will read the account of the
miracles of SS. Gervasius and Protasius given by S. Ambrose, the _City
of God_ of S. Augustine, the _Ecclesiastical History_ of Ven. Bede, and
Dr. Newman’s _Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles_, we can promise him that
he will experience a still greater degree of astonishment than he did
on the perusal of the ante-Nicene fathers. Mr. Buckley appears to be in
_bona fide_, and is probably a much better man than many whose knowledge
is more extensive. The hallucination of mind which produces in him the
belief that he stands on a higher intellectual plane than Clement of
Alexandria and Cyprian in ancient times, or Petavius, Kleutgen, Bayma,
and “Jesuits” in general, is so simply astounding, and the credulity
requisite to a firm assent to his own statements as “demonstrations” is
so much beyond that which was, in the olden time, shown by believing
in the “phœnix,” that he must be sincere, though very much in need of
information. We cannot help feeling that he is worthy of knowing better,
and would be convinced of the truth if it were set before him fairly.
It is plain that he has no knowledge of the evidence which exists of
a series of miracles wrought in the Catholic Church continuously from
the times of the apostles to our own day, and which cannot be rejected
without subverting the evidence on which the truth of all miracles
whatsoever is based. The number of these which are considered by prudent
Catholic writers to be quite certain or probable is beyond reckoning,
though still very small in comparison with ordinary events and the
experiences of the whole number of Catholics in all ages. Those of the
most extraordinary magnitude are relatively much fewer in number than
those which are less wonderful, as, for instance, the raising of the
dead to life. Nevertheless, there are instances of this kind--_e.g._,
those related of S. Dominic, S. Bernard, S. Teresa, and S. Francis
Xavier--which, to say the least, have a _primâ facie_ probability. One
of another kind is the perpetually-recurring miracle of the liquefaction
of the blood of S. Januarius. The miraculous and complete cure of Mrs.
Mattingly, of Washington, is an instance which occurred in our own
country, and which, among many other intelligent Protestants, John C.
Calhoun considered as most undoubtedly effected by miraculous agency. We
mention one more only--the restoration of the destroyed vision of one eye
by the application of the water of Lourdes, in the case of Bourriette,
as related by M. Lasserre. We are rather more cautious in professing to
have demonstrated the continuance of miracles than our reverend friend
has been in respect to the contrary. We profess merely to show that his
demonstration requires a serious refutation of the arguments in favor of
the proposition he denies, and to bring forward some considerations in
proof of the title which these arguments have to a respectful and candid
examination. Moreover, though we cannot pretend to prove anything, _hic
et nunc_, by conclusive evidence and reasoning, we refer to the articles
on the miracle of S. Januarius, and to the translation of M. Lasserre’s
book, in our own pages, as containing evidence for two of the instances
alluded to, and to the works of Bishop England for the evidence in Mrs.
Mattingly’s case.
Besides those supernatural effects or events which can only be produced
by a divine power acting immediately on the subject, there are other
marvellous effects which in themselves require only a supermundane
power, and are merely preternatural, using nature in the sense which
excludes all beyond our own world and our human nature. Other unusual
events, again, may appear to be preternatural, but may be proved, or
reasonably conjectured, to proceed from a merely natural cause. Here is
a debatable land, where the truth is attainable with more difficulty,
generally with less certainty, and where there is abundant chance for
unreasonable credulity and equally unreasonable scepticism to lose their
way in opposite directions. Mr. Buckley summarily refers all the strange
phenomena to be found among pagan religions to jugglery and fanaticism.
Spiritism he dismisses without a word of comment, implying that he
considers it to be in no sense preternatural. We differ from him in
opinion in respect to this point also. We have no doubt that many alleged
instances of preternatural events are to be explained by natural causes,
and many others by jugglery and imposture. We cannot, for ourselves,
find a reasonable explanation of a certain number of well-proved facts
in regard to both paganism and spiritism, except on the hypothesis of
preternatural agency. The nature of that agency cannot be determined
without recurring to theological science. Catholic theology determines
such cases by referring them to the agency of demons. Mr. Buckley is
afraid to admit that the alleged “miracles were real and wrought by
devils.” “If so,” he continues, “we may ask, in the language of Job,
Where and what is God?” We answer to this that God does not permit demons
to deceive men to such an extent as to cause the ruin of their souls,
except through their own wilful and culpable submission to these deceits.
It makes no difference whether the delusion produced is referred to
jugglery or demonology in respect to this particular question.
THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM. Part Third. By T. W. Allies.
London: Longmans & Co. 1875.
Mr. Allies dedicates this volume, in very beautiful and appropriate
terms, to Dr. Newman, who, he says in classic and graceful phrase,
having once been “the Hector of a doomed Troy,” is now “the Achilles
of the city of God.” The particular topic of the book is the relation
of Greek philosophy to the Christian church. A remarkable chapter on
the foundation of the Roman Church, in which great use is made of the
discoveries of archæologists, precedes the treatment of the Neostoic,
Neopythagorean, and Neoplatonic schools, with cognate topics. One of
the most interesting and novel chapters is that on Apollonius of Tyana,
whose wonderful life, as related by Philostratus, the author regards as
a philosophic and anti-Christian myth invented by the above-mentioned
pagan writer, with only a slight basis of historical truth. Mr. Allies
has studied the deep, thoughtful works of those German authors who
give a truly intelligent and connected history of philosophy, and his
work is a valuable contribution to that branch of science, as well as
to the history of Christianity. One of the most irresistible proofs of
the divine mission and divine personality of Jesus Christ lies in the
blending of the elements of Hellenic genius and culture, Jewish faith,
and Roman law into a new composite, by a new form, when he founded his
universal kingdom. A mere man, by his own natural power, and under the
circumstances in which he lived, could not have conceived such an idea,
much less have carried it into execution. The most ineffably stupid, as
well as atrociously wicked, of all impostors and philosophical charlatans
are those apostate Christians who strive to drag Christianity down to
the level of the pagan systems of religion and philosophy, and reduce
it to a mere natural phenomenon. Mr. Allies shows this in a work which
combines erudition with a grace of style formed on classic models, and
an enlightened, fervent Catholic spirit, imbibed from the fathers and
doctors of the church. At a time when the popular philosophy is decked
in false hair and mock-jewels, as a stage-queen, it is cheering to find
here and there a votary of that genuine philosophy whose beauty is native
and real, and who willingly proclaims her own subjection and inferiority
by humbly saying, _Ecce ancilla Domini_.
THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC QUARTERLY REVIEW. Vol. I. No. 1. January,
1876. Philadelphia: Hardy & Mahony.
A very large number of the most highly gifted and learned Catholics
throughout Christendom, both clergymen and laymen, are at present
employed in writing for the reviews of various classes which have existed
for a greater or lesser period of time within the present century. Much
of the very best literature of the age is to be found in their articles,
and a very considerable part of this is of permanent value. In solid
merit of matter and style, and in adaptation to the wants of the time,
the best of these periodicals have improved steadily, and we may say
of some of them that they hardly admit of any farther progress. The
advantage of such periodicals is not only very great for their readers,
but almost equally so for those who are engaged in contributing to their
contents. The effort and practice of writing constantly for the public
react upon the writers. Each one is encouraged and instructed in the
most useful and effective method of directing his studies and giving
verbal expression to their results, so as to attain the practical end
he has in view--that of disseminating and diffusing knowledge over as
wide an extent as possible. The combination of various writers, each
having one or more specialties, under a competent editorial direction
secures variety and versatility without prejudice to unity, and corrects
the excesses or defects of individuality without checking originality,
thus giving to the resulting work in some respects a superiority over
that which is the product of one single mind, unless that mind possesses
the gifts and acquisitions in _modo eminenti_ which are usually found
divided among a number of different persons. To conduct a review alone
is a herculean task, and Dr. Brownson has accomplished a work which is
really astonishing in maintaining, almost by unaided effort, through so
many years, a periodical of the high rank accorded by common consent to
the one which bore his name and will be his perpetual monument. That, at
the present juncture, a new review is necessary and has a fine field open
before it; that in its management ecclesiastical direction and episcopal
control are requisite for adequate security and weight with the Catholic
public; and that full opportunity for efficient co-operation on the part
of laymen of talent and education is most desirable, cannot admit of a
moment’s doubt. It is therefore a matter of heart-felt congratulation
that the favorable moment has been so promptly seized and the vacant
place so quickly occupied by the gentlemen who have undertaken the
editing and the publishing of the _American Catholic Quarterly_. It is
probably known to most, if not all, of our readers that the editors are
Dr. Corcoran, professor in the Ecclesiastical Seminary of Philadelphia;
Dr. O’Connor, the rector of that institution; and Mr. Wolff, who has
long and ably edited the Philadelphia _Catholic Standard_. It would be
difficult to find in the United States an equally competent triad. The
publishers, who have already the experience acquired by the management
of a literary magazine and a newspaper, will, we may reasonably hope,
be able to sustain the financial burden of this greater undertaking
in a successful manner, if they receive the support which they have a
right to expect, by means of their subscription list. The first number
of the new review presents a typographical face which is quite peculiar
to itself and decidedly attractive. Its contents, besides articles from
each of the editors, are composed of contributions from three clergymen
and two laymen, embracing a considerable variety of topics. The clerical
contributors are the Right Reverend Bishops Lynch and Becker, and the
Rev. Drs. Corcoran, O’Connor, and McGlynn. The lay contributors are Dr.
Brownson, John Gilmary Shea, and Mr. Wolff. The names of F. Thébaud,
Dr. Marshall, and General Gibbon are among those announced for the
next number. We extend a cordial greeting with our best wishes to the
_American Catholic Quarterly Review_.
MANUAL OF CATHOLIC INDIAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATIONS.
The Indian question continues to be one of the most troublesome in our
national politics. Its only real solution--and we believe this to be
President Grant’s opinion--is to Christianize the Indians. The task is
undoubtedly a hard one, but it would be far less so if wolves in sheep’s
clothing had not been sent among them. The only successful attempt at
civilizing the Indians has been made by Catholic missionaries. But under
the administration of the Indian Bureau, the utter rottenness of which
has been so recently exposed, missions and reservations have been thrown
to this religious agency and that without the slightest regard for the
wishes of those who, it is to be supposed, were most to be benefited by
the operation--the Indians themselves. In this way flourishing Catholic
missions were turned over to the Methodist or other denominations, and
the representations of the missionaries, as well as of the chiefs and
tribes themselves, were of no avail whatever to alter so iniquitous
a proceeding. This little manual gives a brief sketch of the status
of Catholic Indians and working of the Bureau of Indian Missions. It
contains also an earnest appeal to the Catholic ladies of the United
States from the “Ladies’ Catholic Indian Missionary Association of
Washington, D. C.,” urging contributions and the formation of similar
associations throughout the country to aid in sustaining the Catholic
Indian missions.
A CORRECTION.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD:
I have just received, through the Catholic Publication Society, the
following card from Mr. Gladstone:
“Mr. Gladstone desires to send with his compliments his thanks
to the Society for a copy, which he has received, of Dr.
Clarke’s interesting paper on _Maryland Toleration_. Having
simply cited his authorities, and used them, as he thinks,
fairly, he will be glad to learn, if he can, the manner in
which they meet the challenge conveyed in the latter portion of
this paper. Mr. Gladstone’s present object is to say he would
be greatly obliged by a _reference_ to enable him to trace the
“irreverent words” imputed to him on page 6, as his _Vatican
Decrees_ have no page 83, and he is not aware of having penned
such a passage.
“4 CARLTON GARDENS, LONDON, Jan. 24, 1856.”
Mr. Gladstone is right in disclaiming the words imputed to him in this
instance. They are, on investigation, found to be the words of the
Rev. Dr. Schaff. The Messrs. Harper, the American publishers of Mr.
Gladstone’s tracts, are largely responsible for the mistake, by having
inserted in their publication a tract of Dr. Schaff, paged in common, and
all covered by the outside title of “_Rome and the Newest Fashions in
Religion. Gladstone_,” and by the title-page giving the authorship “By
the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone.” To a writer making selections as needed
from different portions of this book the mistake was easy and natural;
and though the authorship of Dr. Schaff’s _History of the Vatican
Decrees_ containing the passage in question is given, it is not so given
as easily to reach the eye, and is obscured by the introduction of Dr.
Schaff’s tract into a volume under Mr. Gladstone’s name, and by paging
Dr. Schaff’s _History_ in common with Mr. Gladstone’s _Vaticanism_. On
page 83 of _this_ publication of the Messrs. Harper the “irreverent
words” are found. I am only too much gratified at Mr. Gladstone’s
disowning them, and hasten, on my part, to make this correction through
your columns, in which my reply to Mr. Gladstone on _Maryland Toleration_
first appeared, and to beg his acceptance of this _amende honorable_.
RICH. H. CLARKE
51 CHAMBERS STREET, NEW YORK, February 10, 1876.
* * * * *
In a notice, which appeared in last month’s CATHOLIC WORLD, of certain
works published by Herder, Freiburg, it was stated that the publications
of that house are imported by the firm of Benziger Bros. Mr. Herder has
a branch house in St. Louis, Missouri, where all his publications may be
procured.
PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.
The First Annual Report of the New York Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Landreth’s Rural Register and Almanac, 1876.
FOOTNOTES
[1] _Queen Mary_: A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L. Boston: J. R.
Osgood & Co. 1875.
[2] It is proper to state that the present criticism is not by the writer
of the article on Mr. Tennyson in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for May, 1868.
[3] The preceding article was ready for the printers before a copy fell
into our hands of _Mary Stuart_--a drama by Sir Aubrey de Vere--a poem
which it had not been our good fortune to have read before. The public
would seem to have exhibited an appreciation of this work we should
scarcely have expected from them, for it is, we believe, out of print.
For ourselves, we must say that for poetical conception, appreciation and
development of the several personages of the drama, it appears to us to
be very much superior to _Queen Mary_.
[4] The title of captal (from _capitalis_) was formerly a common one
among Aquitaine lords, but was gradually laid aside. The Captals de Buch
and Trente were the last to bear it.
[5] In the Journal of the Sisters of Charity of that time we read:
“Jan. 22.--M. Vincent arrived at eleven o’clock in the evening, bringing
us two children; one perhaps six days old, the other older. Both were
crying.…”
“Jan. 25.--The streets are full of snow. We are expecting M. Vincent.”
“Jan. 26.--Poor M. Vincent is chilled through. He has brought us an
infant.…”
“Feb. 1.--The archbishop came to see us. We are in great need of public
charity! M. Vincent places no limit to his ardent love for poor children.”
And when their resources are exhausted, the saint makes the following
pathetic appeal to the patronesses: “Compassion has led you to adopt
these little creatures as your own children. You are their mothers
according to grace, as their mothers by nature have abandoned them.
Will you also abandon them in your turn? Their life and death are in
your hands. I am going to take your vote on the point. The charity you
give or refuse is a terrible decision in your hands. It is time to
pronounce their sentence, and learn if you will no longer have pity on
them.”--_Sermon of S. Vincent to the Ladies of Charity_ in 1648.
[6] _The Earl of Castlehaven’s Review_; or, His Memoirs of His Engagement
and Carriage in the Irish Wars. Enlarged and corrected. With an Appendix
and Postscript. London: Printed for Charles Brome at the Gun in St.
Paul’s Churchyard. 1684.
[7] This was the title given at one time by the French courtiers to
Frederick I.
[8] Their first condition for a suspension of arms was a payment to
them of £25,000 per month. These were in large part the same forces who
afterwards sold their fugitive king for so many pounds sterling to the
Parliament, violating the rights of sanctuary and hospitality, held
sacred by the most barbarous races. It is curious to observe the supreme
boldness with which Macaulay and the popular writers of the radical
school essay to gloss over the dishonorable transactions affecting the
parliamentary side in this contest between the King and Commons. The
veriest dastards become heroes; and the first canting cut-throat is safe
to be made a martyr of in their pages for conscience’ sake and the rights
of man.
[9] _Apol. vii._
[10] _Fundam. Phil._ lib. vii. c. 7.
[11] _Phil. Fundam._ lib. vii. c. 7.
[12] Italian proverb: “If not true, it deserves to be true.”
[13] Written during the Pope’s exile, 1848
[14] _The Secret Warfare of Freemasonry against the Church and State._
Translated from the German, with an Introduction. London: Burns, Oates &
Co. 1875. (New York: The Catholic Publication Society.)
[15] S. Mark xiii. 22.
[16] “Vos ergo videte; ecce, prædixi vobis omnia.”--Ib. 23.
[17] “Videte, vigilate, et orate: nescitis enim, quando tempus sit.”--Ib.
33.
[18] “Vigilate ergo … ne, cum venerit repente, inveniat vos
dormientes.”--Ib. 35, 36.
[19] “Quod autem vobis dico, omnibus dico: Vigilate!”--Ib. 37.
[20] “Sine parabola autem non loquebatur eis; seorsum autem discipulis
suis disserebat omnia.”--S. Mark iv. 34.
[21] “Vobis datum est nosse mysterium regni Dei: illis autem, qui foris
sunt, in parabolis omnia fiunt.”--Ib. 11.
[22] “Nescitis parabolam hanc; et quomodo omnes parabolas
cognoscetis.”--Ib. 13.
[23] “Nisi venerit discessio primum, et revelatus fuerit homo peccati,
filius perditionis, qui adversatur et extollitur supra omne, quod
dicitur Deus, aut quod colitur ita ut in templo Dei sedeat, ostendens
se, tamquam sit Deus.… Et nunc quid detineat, scitis, ut reveletur in
suo tempore. Nam mysterium jam operatur iniquitatis, tantum ut qui tenet
nunc, teneat, donec de medio fiat. Et tunc revelabitur ille iniquus (ὁ
άνομος), quem Dominus Jesus interficiet spiritu oris sui, et destruet
illustratione adventus sui cum; cujus est adventus secundum operationem
Satanæ in omni virtute, et signis et prodigiis mendacibus, et in omni
seductione iniquitatis iis, qui pereunt; eo quod caritatem veritatis non
receperunt, ut salvi fierent. Ideo mittet illis Deus operationem erroris,
ut credant mendacio, ut judicentur omnes, qui non crediderunt veritati,
sed consenserunt iniquitati.”--2 Thess. ii. 3-11.
[24] “Spiritus autem manifeste dicit, quia in novissimis temporibus
discedent quidam a fide, attendentes spiritibus erroris et doctrinis
dæmoniorum; in hypocrisi loquentium mendacium, et cauteriatam habentium
suam conscientiam.”--1 Tim. iv. 1, 2.
[25] “Hoc autem scito, quod in novissimis diebus instabunt tempora
periculosa: erunt homines seipsos amantes, cupidi, elati, superbi,
blasphemi, parentibus non obedientes, ingrati, scelesti, sine affectione,
sine pace, criminatores, incontinentes, immites sine benignitate,
proditores, protervi, timidi, et voluptatum amatores magis quam Dei,
habentes speciem quidem pietatis, virtutem autem ejus abnegantes.”--2
Tim. iii. 1-5.
[26] “Venient in novissimis diebus in deceptione illusores, juxta
proprias concupiscentias ambulantes.”--2 Peter iii. 3.
[27] “In novissimo tempore venient illusores, secundum, desideria sua
ambulantes in impietatibus. Hi sunt, qui segregant semetipsos, animales,
Spiritum non habentes.”--S. Jud. 18, 19.
[28] “Filioli, novissima hora est, et sicut audistis, quia Antichristus
venit, et nunc Antichristi multi facti sunt: unde scimus, quia novissima
hora est.… Hic est Antichristus qui negat Patrem et Filium.”--1 S. John
ii. 18, 22.
[29] “Et omnis spiritus qui solvit Jesum, ex Deo non est; et hic est
Antichristus, de quo audistis, quoniam venit, et nunc jam in mundo
est.”--Ib. iv. 3.
[30] “Si quis habet aurem, audiat.”--Apoc. xiii. 9.
[31] “Hic sapientia est. Qui habet intellectum computet numerum
bestiæ.”--Ib. 18
[32] _Histoire de la Révolution Française_, v. ii. c. 3.
[33] _The Secret Warfare of Freemasonry_, p. 123.
[34] Ibid. 124.
[35] Those in this country who respect religion, law, and the peace of
society should not be imposed upon by the aspect of Freemasonry here.
The principles and modes of acting of the society are those we have
described. The application of them depends wholly on time, place, and
circumstances. The ordinary observer sees nothing in the members of
the craft here but a number of inoffensive individuals, who belong to
a _soi-disant_ benevolent association which, by means of secret signs,
enables them to get out of the clutches of the law, procure employment
and office, and obtain other advantages not possessed by the rest of
their fellow-citizens. But then the innocent rank and file are the dead
weight which the society employs, on occasion, to aid in compassing its
ulterior designs. Here there are no civil or religious institutions
which stand in their way, and their mode of action is to sap and mine
the morals of the community, on which society rests, and with which it
must perish. Of what it is capable, if it seems needful to compassing its
ends, any one may understand by the fiendish murder of William Morgan.
This murder was decided on at a lodge-meeting directed by Freemason
officials, _in pursuance of the rules of the craft_, and was perpetrated
by Freemasons bearing a respectable character, who had never before been
guilty of a criminal action, who were known, yet were never punished
nor even tried, but died a natural death, and who do not appear to have
experienced any loss of reputation for their foul deed. (See Mr. Thurlow
Weed’s recent letter to the New York _Herald_.)
[36] Before we proceed to expose the even yet more hideous loathsomeness
of this vile association, a few words of explanation are necessary.
In all we write we have in view an organization--its constitution and
motives--and that only. The individual responsibility of its several
members is a matter for their own conscience; it is no affair of ours.
We believe that the bulk of the association, all up to the thirtieth
degree, or “Knights of the White Eagle,” or “Kadosch,” are in complete
ignorance of the hellish criminality of its objects. Even the Rosicrucian
has something to learn; although to have become that he must have
stamped himself with the mark of Antichrist by the abandonment of his
belief in Christ and in all revealed religion. But the vast majority,
whose numbers, influence, and respectability the dark leaders use for
the furtherance of their monstrous designs, live and die in complete
ignorance of the real objects and principles of the craft. We ourselves
know an instance of an individual, now reconciled to the church, who was
once a Master Mason, and who to this moment is in utter ignorance of
them. They are sedulously concealed from all who have not dispossessed
themselves of the “prejudices of religion and morality.” The author
of the work to which we are indebted for almost all our documentary
evidence mentions the case of one who had advanced to the high grade
of Rosicrucian, but who, not until he was initiated into the grade
of Kadosch, was completely stunned and horrified by the demoniacal
disclosures poured into his ears. Most of the Freemasons, however, have
joined the body as a mere philanthropic institution, or on the lower
motive of self-interest. Nor is it possible to convince these people of
the fearful consequences to which they are contributing. Of course, but
few of these, it is to be hoped, are involved in the full guilt of the
“craft.” Every Catholic who belongs to it is in mortal sin. For the rest,
we cannot but hope and believe that an overwhelming majority are innocent
of any sinister motives. But it is impossible to exonerate them entirely.
For, first, the “craft” is now pursuing its operations with such
unblushing effrontery that it is difficult for any but illiterate people
to plead entire ignorance; and next, no one can, without moral guilt,
bind himself by terrible oaths, for the breaking of which he consents to
be assassinated, to keep inviolable secrets with the nature of which he
is previously unacquainted. It cannot but be to his everlasting peril
that any one permits himself to be branded with this “mark of the beast.”
[37] _Secret Warfare of Freemasonry_, pp. 51, 52.
[38] Ib. p. 65.
[39] Ib. 207.
[40] Ib. pp. 196-8.
[41] This journal, at the time of the first initiation of the Prince of
Wales into the “craft,” in an article on that event, heaped contempt
and ridicule on the whole affair. A recent article on the young man’s
initiation as Master may satisfy the most exacting Mason.
[42] The writer refers to the highest grades.
[43] _Secret Warfare of Freemasonry_, pp. 232, 233.
[44] _Utopia._ By Sir Thomas More.
[45] A sort of divan, not unusual in the East at the present day. The
sultan, when receiving a visit of ceremony, sits on a sort of sofa or
post-bed. Traces of it were also found in the “palaces” of Ashantec.
[46] “The new spirit made its appearance in the world about the XVIth
century. Its end is to substitute a new society for that of the Middle
Ages. Hence the necessity that the first modern revolution should be a
religious one.… It was Germany and Luther that produced it.”--Cousin,
_Cours d’hist. de la philos._, p. 7, Paris, 1841.
[47] “Non a prætoris edicto, ut plerique nunc, neque a duo decim Tabulis,
ut superiores, sed penitus ex intima philosophia haurienda est juris
disciplina.”--Cic., _De legib._ lib. i.
[48] Cic., _de fin. bon. et malor._ i. 11.
[49] Plato, _Des lois_, liv. i.
[50] “Illud stultissimum (est), existimare omnia justa esse, quæ scripta
sint in populorum institutis et legibus.”--_De legibus._
[51] “Neque opinione sed natura constitutum esse jus.”--Ibid.
[52] “Sæculis omnibus ante nata est, (ante) quam scripta lex ulla, aut
quam omnino civitas constituta.”--Ibid.
[53] “Quidam corum quædam magna, _quantum divinitus adjuti sunt_,
invenerunt.”--S. Aug., _Civit. Dei_, i. ii. c. 7.
“Has scientias dederunt philosophi et illustrati sunt; Deus enim illis
_revelavit_.”--S. Bonavent., _Lum. Eccl._, Serm. 5.
[54] The two following paragraphs are taken freely from the treatise _De
legibus_, passim.
[55] The following paragraph is also taken from Cicero.
[56] “Erat lux vera quæ illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc
mundum.”--S. Joan., i. 9.
[57] “Et vita erat lux hominum … in tenebris lucet, et tenebræ eam non
comprehenderunt.”--Id.
[58] _Cont. gent._ iv. 13.
[59] V. Lassalle, _Das System der erworbenen Rechte_, i. 2, not. à la
pag. 70.
[60] _Considerat. sur la France._
[61] _Arbeiter Programm._, v. Ferd. Lassalle.
[62] _Du suffrage universel et de la manière de voter._ Par H. Taine.
Paris: Hachette, 1872.
[63] Bergier, after Tertullian.
[64] De Maistre, _Princip. générat._
[65] _Reflections on the Revolution in France._
[66] _Corresp. entre le Comte de Mirabeau et le Comte de la Marck._
Paris: Le Normant. 1851.
[67] _Politique._ l. i. c.
[68] _De civit. Dei._ 19.
[69] _De rebus publ. et princip. institut._, l. iii. c. 9.
[70] _Reflections on the French Revolution._
[71] “Universa propter semetipsum operatus est Dominus.”--Proverbs xvi. 4.
[72] _Polit._, vii. 2.
[73] Id. ibid. c. 1.
[74] Aristotle knew no other state than the city.
[75] Isaias xxxiii. See also the words of Jesus to Pilate: “Tu dicis quia
Rex ego sum.”
[76] “Dabo legem in visceribus eorum.”--Jer. xxxi.
[77] _Viri protestantici ad summum Pontificem appellatio._--Londini,
Wyman et fil, 1869.
[78] M. Em. Montaigut, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.
[79] M. Le Play.
[80] De Maistre, _Considerat. sur la France_.
[81] _Fundam. Phil._, book vii. ch. 6.
[82] Sicut punctum se habet ad lineam, ita se habet nunc ad tempus.
Si imaginemur punctum quiescere, non poterimus imaginari ipsum esse
causam lineæ: si vero imaginemur ipsum moveri, licet in ipso nulla sit
dimensio, nec aliqua divisio per consequens, per naturam tamen motus sui
relinquitur aliquid divisibile.… Illud tamen punctum non est de lineæ
essentia; quia nihil unum et idem realiter omnimodis indivisibile potest
simul in diversis partibus ejusdem continui permanentis esse.… Punctum
ergo mathematice imaginatum, quod motu suo causat lineam, necessario
nihil lineæ erit: sed erit unum secundum rem, et diversum secundum
rationem; et hæc diversitas, quæ consistit in motu suo, realiter est in
linea, non identitas sua secundum rem.… Eodem vero modo instans, quod est
mensura mobilis sequens ipsum, est unum secundum rem, quum nihil pereat
de substantia ipsius mobilis, cuius instans est mensura inseparabilis,
sed diversum et diversum secundum rationem. Et hæc ejus diversitas est
tempus essentialiter.
[83] Quia motus primus unus est, tempus est unum, mensurans omnes motus
simul actos.--Opusc. 44, _De tempore_, c. 2.
[84] Stans et movens se non videntur differre secundum substantiam,
sed solum secundum rationem. Nunc autem æternitatis est stans, et nunc
temporis fluens; quare non videntur differre nisi ratione sola--_De
tempore_, c. 4.
[85] Ista non possunt habere veritatem secundum ea, quæ determinata sunt.
Visum est enim, quod æternitas et tempus essentialiter differunt. Item
quæcumque se habent ut causa et causatum, essentialiter differunt; nunc
autem æternitatis, quum non differat ab æternitate nisi sola ratione,
est causa temporis, et nunc ipsius, ut dictum est. Quare nunc temporis
et nunc æternitatis essentialiter differunt. Præterea nunc temporis
est continuativum præteriti cum futuro; nunc autem æternitatis non est
continuativum præteriti cum futuro, quia in æternitate non est prius
nec posterius, nec præteritum, nec futurum, sed tota æternitas est tota
simul. Nec valet ratio in oppositum, quum dicitur quod stans et fluens
non differunt per essentiam. Verum est in omni eo quod contingit stare
et fluens esse; tamen stans quod nullo modo contingit fluere, et fluens,
quod nullo modo contingit stare, differunt per essentiam. Talia autem
sunt nunc æternitatis, et nunc temporis.--Ibid.
[86] _Summa Theol._, p. 1, q. 46, a. 2.
[87] Novitas mundi non potest demonstrationem recipere ex parte ipsius
mundi. Demonstrationis enim principium est quod quid est. Unumquodque
autem secundum rationem suæ speciei abstrahit ab hic et nunc; propter
quod dicitur quod universalia sunt ubique et semper. Unde demonstrari non
potest quod homo, aut cœlum, aut lapis non semper fuit.--Ibid.
[88] Sicut enim si pes ab æternitate semper fuisset in pulvere, semper
subesset vestigium, quod a calcante factum nemo dubitaret, sic et mundus
semper fuit, semper existente qui fecit.--Ibid.
[89] Et hoc utile est ut consideretur, ne forte aliquis quod fidei est
demonstrare præsumens rationes non necessarias inducat, quæ præbeant
materiam irridendi infidelibus existimantibus nos propter eiusmodi
rationes credere quæ fidei sunt.--Ibid.
[90] Uno modo dicitur æternitas mensura durationis rei semper similiter
se habentis, nihil acquirentis in futuro et nihil amittentis in præterito
et sic propriissime sumitur æternitas. Secundo modo dicitur æternitas
mensura durationis rei habentis esse fixum et stabile, recipientis
tamen vices in operationibus suis; et æternitas sic accepta propria
dicitur ævum: ævum enim est mensura eorum, quorum esse est stabile,
quæ tamen habent successionem in operibus suis, sicut intelligentiæ.
Tertio modo dicitur æternitas mensura durationis successivæ habentis
prius et posterius, carentis tamen principio et fine, vel carentis fine
et tamen habentis principium; et utroque modo ponitur mundus æternus,
licet secundum veritatem sit temporalis: et ista impropriissime dicitur
æternitas; rationi enim æternitatis repugnat prius et posterius.--Opusc.,
_De tempore_, c. 4.
[91] See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, May, 1875, page 234 et seq.
[92] Deus aut prior est mundo natura tantum, aut et duratione. Si natura
tantum; ergo quum Deus sit ab æterno, et mundus est ab æterno. Si autem
est prior duratione, prius autem et posterius in duratione constituunt
tempus; ergo ante mundum fuit tempus: quod est impossibile.--_Summa
Theol._, p. 1, q. 46, a. 1.
[93] Deus est prior mundo duratione: sed per prius non designat
prioritatem temporis, sed æternitatis. Vel dicendum, quod designat
prioritatem temporis imaginati, et non realiter existentis; sicut quum
dicitur: supra cœlum nihil est, per _supra_ designat locum imaginarium
tantum, secundum quod possibile est imaginari dimensionibus cælestis
corporis dimensiones alias superaddi.--Ibid.
[94] _Fundam. Philos._, book vii. ch. 10.
[95] See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, November, 1874, p. 272, and January, 1875,
p. 487.
[96] A new interest attaches to this church, in the eyes of American
Catholics, since it has been made the Title of the Cardinal-Archbishop of
New York.
[97] There is a vague tradition among the Penobscot Indians in Maine
that a Jesuit father crossed from the head-waters of the Kennebec to the
valley of the Passumpsic, east of the Green Mountains, at an earlier date.
[98] _Hist. Maryland_, vol. ii. p. 352.
[99] _History United States_, vol. i. p. 238.
[100] Id. p. 241.
[101] Id. p. 244.
[102] Id. p. 247.
[103] _History United States_, vol. i. p. 248.
[104] Chalmers’ _Annals_, vol. i. pp. 207, 208.
[105] Story, _Com. on the Constitution_, sec. 107.
[106] _Sketches of the Early History of Maryland_ by Thomas W. Griffith,
pp. 3, 4.
[107] Bancroft, _Hist. U. S._, vol. i. p. 238.
[108] _The Brit. Emp. in America_, vol. i. pp. 4, 5.
[109] _Hist. Md._, p. 232.
[110] Father Andrew White’s _Narrative_, Md. Hist. Soc., 1874, p. 32.
[111] _Sketches_, etc., p. 5.
[112] Davis’ _Day-Star of Am. Freedom_, p. 149.
[113] _History of Maryland_, p. 24.
[114] Bozman’s _History of Maryland_, p. 109.
[115] _History of United States_, vol. i. p. 241.
[116] _History of Maryland_, p. 24.
[117] _Maryland Toleration_, p. 36.
[118] _History of Maryland_, p. 33.
[119] _History of United States_, p. 257.
[120] _Maryland Toleration_, p. 40.
[121] _Day-Star of American Freedom_, p. 36.
[122] _Day-Star of American Freedom_, p. 38.
[123] _History of Maryland_, vol. ii. p. 85.
[124] _History of the United States_, p. 252.
[125] _Day-Star of American Freedom_, p. 138.
[126] Rev. Ethan Allen says this continued until 1649, when Kent was
erected into a county.--_Maryland Toleration_, p. 36.
[127] _Day-Star of American Freedom_, p. 143.
[128] Id. p. 160.
[129] The document at length, with the signatures, is given in numerous
histories of Maryland, and will be found in Davis’s _Day-Star of American
Freedom_, p. 71.
[130] Kent’s _Commentaries on Am. Law_, vol. ii. pp. 36, 37.
[131] Reprinted from advance sheets of _The Prose Works of William
Wordsworth_. Edited, with preface, notes, and illustrations, by the Rev.
Alex. B. Grosart; now for the first time published, by Moxon, Son & Co.,
London. These works will fill three volumes, embracing respectively the
political and ethical, æsthetical and literary, critical and ethical,
writings of the author, and, what will interest American readers
especially, his Republican Defence.
[132] Afterwards Father Faber of the Oratory. His “Sir Launcelot” abounds
in admirable descriptions.
[133] “For us the stream of fiction ceased to flow,” (dedicatory stanzas
to “The White Doe of Rylstone”).
[134] See his sonnet on the seat of Dante, close to the Duomo at Florence
(_Poems of Early and Late Years_).
[135] “Evening Voluntary.”
[136] _A Song of Faith, Devout Exercises, and Sonnets_ (Pickering). The
dedication closed thus: “I may at least hope to be named hereafter among
the friends of Wordsworth.”
[137] It may be well to remark here that in this century the word
_domestic_ was familiarly used to designate one who was attached to the
house and fortunes of another.
[138] Mme. Louise, Duchess of Angoulême, and mother of Francis I.
[139] By the statutes of præmunire, all persons were forbidden to hold
from Rome any _provision_ or power to exercise any authority without
permission from the king, under penalty of placing themselves beyond his
protection and being severely punished.
[140] Wolsey’s customary designation of Anne Boleyn.
[141] This corresponded to the court of marshalsea in England.
[142] During the memorable conclave at which Pius IX. was elected, this
office was held by Monsignor Pallavicino, who caused to be struck,
according to his right, a number of bronze and silver medals with
his family arms quartering those of Gregory XVI. Above his prelate’s
hat on the obverse were the words _Sede Vacante_, and on the reverse
the inscription _Alerames ex marchionibus Pallavicino sacri palatii
apostolici præfectus et conclavis gubernator_ 1846.
[143] It dates from the year 1535, when Paul III. permitted his majordomo
Boccaferri to assume on his coat-of-arms, as an additament of honor (in
the language of blazonry), one of the lilies or _fleurs-de-lis_ of the
Farnese family. If the subject prefer to do so, he may bear the Pope’s
arms on a canton, carry them on an inescutcheon, or impale instead of
quartering them.
[144] While writing this, we hear of the elevation to the purple of the
majordomo Monsignor Pacca, whom we have had the honor, when a private
chamberlain to the Pope, of knowing and of serving under. He was one of
the most popular prelates at the Vatican for his urbanity and attention
to business. He is a patrician of the bluest blood of Beneventum and
nephew to the celebrated Cardinal Pacca, so well known for his services
to Pope Pius VII. and for his interesting _Memoirs_.
[145] The grated prison for such offenders was a chamber deep down among
the vaults of the Cellarium Majus of the Lateran.
[146] This office still exists, and is one of the important charges at
the papal court which is always held by a layman. It was hereditary in
the famous Conti family until its extinction in the last century, when it
passed, after a considerable interval, on the same condition into that of
Ruspoli as the nearest representative of that ancient race.
[147] Ambassadors and foreign ministers accredited to the Holy See claim
the right of presentation or of access through the Cardinal Secretary of
State.
[148] It is well to observe that briefs are not sealed with the
_original_ ring, which does not go out of the keeper’s custody except
the Pope demand it, but with a fac-simile preserved in the _Secreteria
de Brevi_. Since June, 1842, red sealing-wax, because too brittle and
effaceable, is no longer used; but in its stead a thick red ink, or
rather pigment, is employed.
[149] In England, by a similar fiction, the king (or queen) is imagined
to preside in the Court of King’s Bench.
[150] The first convent of the Dominicans in Rome, at Santa Sabina on the
Aventine, was in part composed of a portion of the Savelli palace, in
which Honorius, who belonged to this family, generally resided, so that
their founder could not help remarking the misbehavior of the loungers
about the court. He did not go out of his way to find fault.
[151] There was a somewhat similar office of very ancient institution
at the imperial court of Constantinople, the holder of which was called
_Epistomonarcha_.
[152] Peter Filargo was a Greek from the island of Candia, which may
account for his love of what at a pontiff’s table corresponded to the
symposium of the ancients--a species of after-dinner enjoyment, when,
wine being introduced, philosophical or other agreeable subjects were
discussed.
[153] The special significance of this title given to Cardinal McCloskey
is that his predecessor in the see of New York and its first bishop, Luke
Concanen, who was consecrated in Rome on April 24, 1808, was a Dominican,
and had been for a long time officially attached to the convent and
church of the _Minerva_, which was the headquarters of his order.
[154] See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, August, 1875, p. 625.
[155] See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, September, 1874, p. 729.
[156] THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1874, p. 766.
[157] See the two articles on “Substantial Generations” in THE CATHOLIC
WORLD, April and May, 1875.
[158] See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for February, 1874, pp, 584. 585.
[159] See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, May, 1874, p. 178.
[160] In the Aristotelic theory, a third kind of movement, _ratione
termini_, was admitted--that is, movement towards dimensive quantity,
as when an animal or a tree grows in bulk. But bodies acquire greater
bulk by accession of new particles, and this accession is carried on by
_local_ movement. Hence it seems to us that the _motus ad quantitatem_ is
not a new kind of movement.
[161] S. Thomas explains this point in the following words: Quum
magnitudo sit divisibilis in infinitum, et puncta sint etiam infinita
in potentia in qualibet magnitudine, sequitur quod inter quælibet duo
loca sint infinita loca media. Mobile autem infinitatem mediorum locorum
non consumit nisi per continuitatem motus; quia sicut loca media sunt
infinita in potentia, ita et in motu continuo est accipere infinita
quædam in potentia.--_Sum. Theol._, p. 1, q. 53, a. 2. This explanation
is identical with our own, though S. Thomas does not explicitly mention
the infinitesimals of time.
[162] _Music of Nature._
[163] This was an anachronism in costume which in our day would not be
pardonable, but it was common enough until within half a century ago.
The queen of James I., Anne of Denmark, insisted upon playing the part
of Thetis, goddess of the ocean, in a “monstrous farthingale” (in modern
speech, a very exaggerated crinoline.)
[164] Puttenham, _Art of Poesie_, pub. in 1589, quoted in Ritson.
[165] Probably some coarse lace or net
[166] _The Complete Angler, or the Contemplative Man’s Recreation._
[167] Harmless
[168] Agnes Strickland’s _Lives of the Queens of England_.
[169] _Penny Magazine_, 1834.
[170] This word has no English equivalent; it means the casting out of
the heart--a hyperbolical manner of expressing the most excessive nausea.
[171] The Council of Trent decreed nothing on the subject of the
authority of the church: that of the Vatican had to supply the omission.
The struggle with Protestantism on this subject reached its last stage in
the definition of the dogma of Papal Infallibility decreed by the church
assembled at the Council of the Vatican.
[172] In its numbers of April 22 and May 16 last the _Unità Cattolica_
passed a high eulogium on the work of Father Hecker. “There is in this
work,” says the Abbé Margotti, “a great boldness of thought, but always
governed by the faith, and by the great principle of the infallible
authority of the Pope.”
[173] “A Song of Faith.” 1842. Besides that poem, my father published
two dramatic works, viz. _Julian the Apostate_ (1823) and _The Duke of
Mercia_, 1823. In 1847, his last drama, _Mary Tudor_, was published. He
was born at Curragh Chase, Ireland, on the 28th of August, 1788, and died
there on the 28th of July, 1846.--A. DE VERE.
[174] Dr. Schenck said: “It had been a maxim that the fool of the family
should go into the ministry, and he was sorry to say that there were many
of those who had groped their way into it. It had been stated that a
minister would often pay twice before he would be sued.… Rev. Dr. Newton
said that he would stand a suit before he would pay twice. The speaker
replied that he was glad there was some pluck in these matters” (_Report
in the Philadelphia Press_).
[175] Short for Frederika.
[176] From the German.
[177] Father Faber’s _Bethlehem_.
[178] London: Pickering, 1875. This pamphlet has been already translated
into German under the title _Anglicanismus, Altkatholicismus und die
Vereinigung der christlichen Episcopal-Kirchen_. Mainz: Kirchheim. 1875.
[179] Father Schouvaloff (Barnabite), April 2, 1859.
[180] Gladstone, _Vaticanism_, p. 110.
[181] Second Edition, with a Letter of Mgr. Mermillod, a Special Preface,
and an Appendix. London: Washbourne.
[182] Gladstone, _Vaticanism_, p. 94.
[183] We are authorized by Father Tondini to remark that, for the purpose
of his argument, he has confined himself to speaking of the non-popular
election of _bishops_; but in case any one should say that Mr. Gladstone
referred not to bishops only, but also, and very largely, to clergy,
besides that Mr. Gladstone’s expressions do not naturally lead the reader
to make any exception for himself, Father Tondini is able to show that
even with respect to the inferior clergy Mr. Gladstone’s statement is
inaccurate.
[184] In the appendix to the second edition of _The Pope of Rome_, etc.,
will be found a prayer composed of texts taken from the Greco-Sclavonian
Liturgy, where are quoted some of the titles given by the Greco-Russian
Church to S. Peter, and, in the person of the great S. Leo, even to the
Pope. This appendix is also to be had separately, under the title of
_Some Documents Concerning the Association of Prayers_, etc., London,
Washbourne, 1875.
[185] See “Future of the Russian Church” in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, 1875
(amongst others).
[186] _Expostulation_, p. 30.
[187] “More than once,” says Father Tondini in a note on this
subject--“more than once, in reading defences of the Catholic Church,
written with the best intentions, we could not resist a desire that in
the ‘Litanies of the Saints,’ or other prayers of the church, there might
be inserted some such invocation as this: _A malis advocatis libera
nos, Domine_.’--‘From mischievous advocates, O Lord! deliver us.’ We
say this most earnestly, the more so that it applies also to ourselves.
Many a time, when preparing our writings, we have experienced a feeling
not unlike that of an advocate fully convinced of the innocence of the
accused, but dreading lest, by want of clearness or other defect in
putting forth his arguments, he might not only fail to carry conviction
to the mind of the judges, but also prejudice the cause he wishes to
defend. Never, perhaps, is the necessity of prayer more deeply felt.”
[188] With regard to the powers of the sovereign over the episcopate we
quote the following from the London _Tablet_ for March 27, 1875: “Among
other tremendous stumbling-blocks against the claims for the Church (of
England) by the High Church party a candid writer in the _Church Herald_
is ‘sorely staggered by the oath of allegiance, according to which we
have the chief pastors of the church declaring in the most solemn manner
that they receive the spiritualities of their office _only_ from the
queen, and are bishops by her grace only.’”
In connection with the foregoing we cannot refrain from citing a passage
from Marshall, which is as follows: “Any bishops can only obtain
spiritual jurisdiction in one of two ways--either by receiving it from
those who already possess it, in which case their (the English bishops’)
search must extend beyond their own communion, or by imitating the two
lay travellers in China of whom we have somewhere read, who fancied they
should like to be missionaries, whereupon the one ordained the other, and
was then in turn ordained by _him_, to the great satisfaction of both.”
[189] See _Contemporary Review_ for July.
[190] Since writing the above we happened to see the following case in
point, in the _Church Times_ of September 10, 1875, in which a clergyman,
signing himself “a priest, _not_ of the Diocese of Exeter,” writes a
letter of remonstrance against the violent abuse heaped by “a priest
of the Diocese of Exeter” against the late learned and venerable Vicar
of Morwenstow, Mr. Hawker, who, on the day before his death, made his
submission to the Catholic Church. From this letter, which contains many
candid and interesting admissions, we quote the following: “In these
days, when we have among us so many dignitaries and popular preachers
of the Established Church who in their teaching deny all sacramental
truth, while others cannot repeat the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds
without a gloss, and others again boldly assert that ‘the old religious
ideas expressed in the Apostles’ Creed must be thrown into afresh form,
if they are to retain their hold on the educated minds of the present
generation, it appears monstrous that a clergyman whose faithful adhesion
to the Prayer Book during a ministry of forty years was notorious should
be denounced as a ‘blasphemous rogue and a scoundrel’ _because_ he held
opinions which are considered by some individual members of either church
as denoting ‘a Roman at heart,’ or, in the exercise of a liberty granted
to everyone, thought fit to correspond with influential members of the
Church of Rome.”
[191] _Expostulation_, page 21; iv. “The third proposition.”
[192] “Cooks and controversialists seem to have this in common: that they
nicely appreciate the standard of knowledge in those whose appetites they
supply. The cook is tempted to send up ill-dressed dishes to masters who
have slight skill in, or care for, cookery; and the controversialist
occasionally shows his contempt for the intelligence of his readers by
the quality of the arguments or statements which he presents for their
acceptance. But this, if it is to be done with safety, should be done in
measure.”--Gladstone, _Vaticanism_, pp. 82, 83.
[193] In the German edition of Father Tondini’s pamphlet, the abstract of
this document is given in the original German, as it is to be seen in the
_Bonner Zeitung_ of June 15, 1871.
[194] S. Cyprian (so confidently appealed to by the Old Catholics),
speaking of Novatian, and, as it were, of Dr. Reinkens’ consecration,
says: “He who holds neither the unity of spirit nor the communion
of peace, but separates himself from the bonds of the church and
the hierarchical body, cannot have either the power or the honor of
a bishop--he who would keep neither the unity nor the peace of the
episcopate.”--S. Cyprian, _Ep. 52_. Compare also _Ep. 76_, _Ad magnum de
baptizandis Novationis_, etc., sect. 3.
[195] “Je suis entré dans une de ces lignées ininterrompues par
l’ordination que j’ai reçue des mains de Mgr. Heykamp, _évêque des vieux
Catholiques de Deventer_.”--_Lettre Pastorale de Mgr. l’Evêque Joseph
Hubert Reinkens, Docteur en Théologie._ Paris: Sandoz et Fischbacher,
1874, p. 11.
[196] _Programma of Old-Catholic Literature_, libr. Sandoz et
Fischbacher. Paris.
[197] “Pastoral Letter” (_Programma_, etc.), p. 7.
[198] Silbernagl (Dr. Isidor), _Verfassung und gegenwärtiger Bestand
sämmtlicher Kirchen des Orients_. Landshut, 1865, pp. 10, 11.
[199] See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, January-April, 1875.
[200] See _The Pope of Rome and the Popes of the Orthodox Church_, 2d
ed., pp. 97, 98. Washbourne, London.
[201] King, _The Rites_, etc., p. 295. Quoted in _The Pope of Rome_,
etc., p. 98. See also for what concerns the election of the Russian
bishops the _Règlement ecclésiastique de Pierre le Grand_, avec
introduction, notes, etc., par le R. P. Cæsarius Tondini. Paris: Libr. de
la Soc. bibliographique.
[202] “The idea,” says Polevoi, “that spiritual matters do not appertain
to the authority of the sovereign was still so deeply rooted in men’s
minds that, in the very first session of the Spiritual College, some
members _dared_ (osmelilis) to ask the emperor: ‘Is then the Patriarchal
dignity suppressed, although nothing has been said about it?’ ‘I am your
Patriarch!’ (_Ya Vash Patriarkh!_) angrily (_gnevno_) exclaimed Peter,
striking his breast. The questioners were dumb.”
“This account of Peter’s _coup d’état_,” adds Father Tondini, “was
printed at St. Petersburg in the year 1843, and, be it observed, not
without the approbation of the censors.” See _Pope of Rome_, etc., p. 107.
[203] “These principles have, by the constant aggression of curialism,
been in the main effaced, or, where not effaced, reduced to the last
stage of practical inanition. We see before us the pope, the bishops, the
priesthood, and the people. The priests are _absolute_ over the people;
the bishops over both; the pope over all.…”--_Vaticanism_, p. 24.
[204] See French manifesto.
[205] See London _Tablet_, August 21.
[206] See _Annales Catholiques_, September 25.
[207] See London _Tablet_, Aug. 21.
[208] We wonder that it does not occur to Dr. von Döllinger’s disciples
to make some calculation, from the number of changes his views have
undergone during the last five years, as to how many they had better be
prepared for, according to the ordinary _rule of proportion_, for the
remaining term of his probable existence--_e.g._, four changes in five
years should prepare them for eight in ten, and for a dozen should the
venerable professor live fifteen years more. They should, further, not
forget to ascertain, if possible, for how long _they themselves_ are
_afterwards_ to continue subject to similar variations in their opinions;
for one would suppose they hope to stop somewhere, some time.
[209] _Echo Universel._
[210] See _Annales Catholiques_, 23 Septembre, 1873. Paris: Allard.
[211] Ernest Naville (a Protestant), _Priesthood of the Christian Church_.
[212] The bell of S. Louis’ Church, Buffalo, N. Y.
[213] Among the Spanish subjects in the colonies, there was a class
corresponding to the Loyalists of the American Revolution. One of these
was Don Miguel Moreno, a magistrate belonging to a most respectable
colonial family, and the honored father of His Eminence the present
Archbishop of Valladolid, who was born in Guatemala on Nov. 24, 1817, and
is therefore, in a strict sense of the word, the first American who has
been made a cardinal.
[214] Message of December 2, 1823.
[215] It is curious to contrast the tedious trials that Rome endured
before being able to appoint bishops to independent Spanish America,
with her ease in establishing the hierarchy in the United States.
Yet the Spaniards and Loyalists, who sometimes forgot that political
differences should never interfere with religious unity, might have found
a precedent for this aversion in the case of their northern brethren.
In a sketch of the church in the United States, written by Bishop
Carroll in 1790, it is said that “during the whole war there was not the
least communication between the Catholics of America and their bishop,
who was the vicar-apostolic of the London district. To his spiritual
jurisdiction were subject the United States; but whether he would hold no
correspondence with a country which he, perhaps, considered in a state
of rebellion, or whether a natural indolence and irresolution restrained
him, the fact is he held no kind of intercourse with priest or layman in
this part of his charge.”--B. U. Campbell “Memoirs, etc. of the Most Rev.
John Carroll,” in the _U. S. Catholic Magazine_, 1845.
[216] He was translated by Leo XII. in 1825 to the residential see of
Città di Castello.
[217] Cardinal Wiseman has made a slip in saying (_Last Four Popes_,
p. 308) that the refusal to receive Mgr. Tiberi gave rise to “a little
episode in the life of the present pontiff.” Tiberi went as nuncio to
Madrid in 1827, consequently long after Canon Mastai had returned from
Chili. It was in the case of the previous nuncio, Giustiniani that a
“passing coolness,” occasioned the apostolic mission to South America.
[218] Artand (_Vie de Léon XII._) indicates in a note to p. 129, vol. i.,
the sources whence he obtained these views of the late Prime Minister,
which are given in full.
[219] In 1836 Mgr.--afterwards Cardinal--Gaetano Baluffi, Bishop of
Bagnorea, was sent to this country as first internuncio and apostolic
delegate. He published an interesting work on his return to Italy, giving
an account of religion in South America from its colonization to his own
time: _L’America un tempo spagnuola riguardata sotto l’aspetto religioso
dall’ epoca del suo discoprimento, sino al 1843_. (Ancona, 1844.)
[220] _Dublin Review_, vol. xxiv., June, 1848. The full title of this
rare work (of which there is no copy even in the Astor Library) is as
follows: _Storia delle Missioni Apostoliche dello stato del Chile, colla
descrizione del viaggio dal vecchio al nuovo monde fatto dall’ autore_.
Opera di Giuseppe Sallusti. Roma, 1827, pel Mauri.
[221] This was Gen. Bernard O’Higgins, a gentleman of one of the
distinguished Irish families which took refuge in Spain from the
persecutions of the English government. He was born in Chili of a
Chilian mother. His father had been captain-general of what was called
the kingdom of Chili, and was afterwards Viceroy of Peru. The younger
O’Higgins was a very superior man, taking a principal part in asserting
the independence of his native land, of which he became the first
president; but unfortunately he died in 1823, a few months before the
arrival of the apostolic mission.
[222] Palma boasts of its ancient title of _Muy insigne y leal ciudad_,
and that its habitants have been distinguished “_en todos tiempos por su
filantropia con los naufragos_”--a specimen of which we give.
[223] In the southern hemisphere _January_ comes in summer.
[224] Cordova was formerly the second city in the viceroyalty. It
had an university, erected by the Jesuits, which was once famous. An
ex-professor of this university wrote a book which has been called
“most erudite,” but which is extremely rare. There is no copy in the
Astor Library, although it is an important work for the information it
gives about religion in South America under Spanish rule. The title is
_Fasti Novi Orbis et ordinationum Apostolicarum ad Indias pertinentium
breviarium cum adnotationibus_. Opera D. Cyriaci Morelli presbyteri, olim
in universitate Neo-Cordubensi in Tucumania professoris. Venetiis, 1776.
[225] _Pio IX._ Por D. Jaime Balmes, Presbitero, Madrid, 1847.
[226] The _Annuario Pontificio_ of 1861 called it Americano
Ispano-Portoghese, but the name was since changed to the present one.
[227] This clergyman came to the notice of the Pope from the fact that
an uncle of his, a very worthy man, had been one of Canon Mastai’s great
friends in Chili, and was named and confirmed Archbishop of Santiago,
but resigned the bulls. His nephew was made an apostolic prothonotary in
1859. It was reported that Mgr. Eyzaguirre gave eighty thousand scudi to
the South American College out of his own patrimony. We have enjoyed the
pleasure of a personal acquaintance with him.
[228] _Protestantism and Catholicism in their bearing upon the Liberty
and Prosperity of Nations._ A study of social economy. By Emile de
Laveleye. With an introductory letter by the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone,
M.P. London: 1875.
[229] _The Old Faith and the New_, p. 86.
[230] _Liberty, Equality, Fraternity_, p. 220.
[231] _Minas_ in _Evangeline_, probably as a guide to the pronunciation.
Haliburton also gives this spelling, but it is now abandoned for the old
Acadian French form.
[232] They even went so far as to deliberate whether these people could
be considered human beings or not; but the church, always the true and
faithful guardian of the rights of humanity, immediately raised her voice
in their favor, and was first to render, by the mouth of Pope Paul III.,
a decision which conferred on them, or rather secured them, all their
rights.
[233] Campeggio, before he became cardinal, had been married to
Françoise Vastavillani, by whom he had several children. We are more
than astonished at the ignorance or bad faith of Dr. Burnet, who takes
advantage of this fact to accuse the cardinal of licentiousness.
[234] This young man carried also the letters from Henry VIII. to
Anne Boleyn, which had been referred to the cardinal during the
course of the trial. They are still to be seen in the library of the
Vatican.--Lingard’s _History of England_.
[235] _Gentilism: Religion previous to Christianity._ By Rev. Aug. J.
Thébaud, S.J. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1876.
[236] It is, however, something more than a hypothesis. The confirmation
it receives from the fact that since the prevalence amongst so large
a portion of mankind of an uniformity of rite and dogma, and the
universality of brotherhood occasioned thereby, what seemed to be
obstacles have become means of intercommunion, to such an extent that the
whole World has become, as it were, one vast city, gives it the force of
a demonstration.
[237] _Gentilism_, p. 67.
[238] _Gentilism_, p. 65.
[239] _Gentilism_, p. 110.
[240] _Gentilism_, p. 124.
[241] Ib. pp. 152, 153.
[242] S. Matthew xvi. 4.
[243] 3 Kings xix. 11, 12.
[244] Deuteronomy xxxiii. 27.
[245] In the _Cité Mystique_ of the Blessed Marie d’Agreda there are
one or two passages which indicate a belief that the Blessed Virgin was
more than once admitted to the Beatific Vision before her Assumption. Of
course the assertion is not of faith. Possibly it may admit of a more
modified explanation. On the other hand, Our Lady being equally free from
original as from actual sin, it is more rash to attempt to limit her
privileges than to suppose them absolutely exceptional.
[246] Romans xi. 34.
[247] In other words, theirs is a more imperfect being than ours; though
whether its imperfection is to exclude all idea of their having a fuller
development whereby and in which they will be indemnified for their
sinless share in fallen man’s punishment is still an open question.
[248] We say liberalism, but we might say Freemasonry; for, as we all
know, Masonry is merely organized liberalism.
[249] _The Idea of a University_, p. 469.
[250] _Notes of a Traveller_, pp. 402, 403.
[251] _Lay Sermons_, p. 61.
[252] _The Social Condition_, etc., vol. i. p. 420.
[253] The following language amply sustains our assertion: “Des Teufels
Braut, Ratio die schöne Metze, eine verfluchte Hure, eine schäbige
aussätzige Hure, die höchste Hure des Teufels, die man mit ihrer Weisheit
mit Füszen treten, die man todtschlagen, der man, auf dass sie hässlich
werde einen Dreck in’s Angesicht werfen solle, auf das heimliche Gemach
solle sie sich trollen, die verfluchte Hure, mit ihrem Dünkel, etc, etc.”
[254] “Aber die Wiedertaufer machen aus der Vernunft ein Licht des
Glaubens, dass die Vernunft dem Glauben leuchten soll. Ja, ich meine, sie
leuchtet gleich wie ein Dreck in einer Laterne.”
[255] _Der Culturkampf in Preussen und seine Bedenken_--“Considerations
on the Culture-Struggle in Prussia”--von J. H. von Kirchmann. Leipzig,
1875.
[256] _Culturkampf_, pp. 5-7. For an account of the Falk Laws and
persecution of the church in Germany, see CATHOLIC WORLD for Dec., 1874,
and Jan., 1875.
[257] Page 9.
[258] Tacit. _Annal._, xv. 44.
[259] _Culturkampf_, pp. 16-19.
[260] The above article is a translation of one which appeared in the
_Revue Générale_ of Brussels, December, 1875, and was written by Dr.
Dosfel. In THE CATHOLIC WORLD, November, 1871, a complete analysis of Dr.
Lefebvre’s work on Louise Lateau, quoted so largely in the discussion
before the Academy, was given. The article now presented to our readers
gives a calm, impartial statement of the case of Louise Lateau as it
stands to-day before the scientific investigation of the Academy.--ED.
CATH. WORLD.
[261] _Louise Lateau._ Etude médicale. Par Lefebvre. Louvain: Peeters.
[262] Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre, in his work, _Les Stigmatisées_.
[263] _Bulletin of the Academy_ for the year 1875. Third series, Book
ix., No. 2, p. 145.
[264] _Maladies et facultés diverses des mystiques._ Par le Dr.
Charbonnier, p. 10, et suiv.
[265] The same work.
[266] Report of M. Warlomont, _Mémoires de l’Académie de Médecine_, p.
212.
[267] Professor Lefebvre had himself declared that, to invest the matter
with a rigorously scientific character, the question of abstinence ought
to be the object of an inquiry analogous to that which has established
the reality of the ecstasy and of the stigmatization.
[268] Vascular tumors.
[269] White blood corpuscles.
[270] Acts xvii. 23.
[271] 1 Cor. xii. 31.
[272] Gal. iii. 19.
[273] 3 Kings vi. 7.
[274] Genesis iii. 8.
[275] Malachias iv. 2.
[276] Isaias xxii. 24; or, as it may be translated: “The vessels of small
quality, from vessels of basins even to all vessels of flagons.”
[277] Suarez holds that grace is not always perceptible. There are
moments when we are conscious of the distinct action of grace, by the
direct perception of its effects in our soul. These are the exceptions,
which are multiplied with increasing holiness, until they become the
rule, and heroic sanctity is perfected in all its parts.
[278] S. Matthew xix. 8.
[279] S. Matthew xi. 14.
[280] “Tantum ut qui tenet nunc, teneat, donec de medic fiat.”--2
Thessalonians ii. 7.
[281] It is injurious to sleep in the light of the moon; and it produces
rapid putrefaction in dead fish, etc.
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